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Modernising Scotland's Social Housing: A consultation paper

SECTION 1 SUMMARY OF THE MAIN AREAS COVERED IN THIS CONSULTATION PAPER

In her statement to the Scottish Parliament on 7 November, Margaret Curran, the Minister for Social Justice, announced a package of measures intended to improve fundamentally the quality of the nation’s stock of social housing. The Minister re-affirmed the Executive’s commitment to community ownership through the whole-stock transfer process but also announced that local authorities will have access to a wider range of options for funding the investment that will be necessary to see the improvements in the stock that the Minister has called for. The text of the full statement can be found on the Scottish Parliament’s website at:- http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/official_report/session-02/sor1107-02.htm/Col15023

In summary, the Minister announced proposals in the following areas:-

A new Scottish Social Housing Standard;

Many Scottish local authorities have or are in the process of developing local quality standards for their own stock. It is clear that there would be merit in establishing a national standard that would deliver a minimum set of quality standards for tenants of all social landlords. This would not necessarily cut across any local authority’s own plans but would act as a benchmark against which investment decisions could be made and against which future progress can be assessed. Ministers though are firmly of the view that in order to command widespread support the new standard must be a collaborative effort, arrived at after close consultation with local authorities, Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) and others. Not least, we need to look at the cost of meeting the standard and what a realistic timetable for achieving it will be, along with appropriate interim milestones. In order to focus discussion this paper sets out some options for what the standard might look like although at this stage no individual elements are ruled in or out. Views are being sought in Section 2 on how to develop the standard, what elements it should contain, what target date should be set for meeting it, what interim milestones would be appropriate and how local authorities and RSLs should report their strategies for delivering the standard.

Re-affirmation of the benefits of community ownership through the whole-stock transfer process;

Considerable progress has been made with delivering community ownership through the whole-stock transfer programme. Glasgow and Borders have both successfully transferred and Dumfries and Galloway is in the final stages of transfer. Together these will cover about 100,000 houses and will unlock investment of about £2 billion over the next 10 years. The lessons learnt so far from these transfers are now being reviewed with the aim of streamlining the process to speed up future transfers. The Minister announced on 18 March that a short-life working group would be set up to broaden the scope of the current review and that outside stakeholders will be invited to participate in the group to take forward these issues.

Extending the Prudential Regime to local authority housing capital finance;

Ministers have now decided that housing finance should be brought within the scope of the new prudential borrowing regime already announced for the rest of local authority capital expenditure. This will take effect from April 2004. Considerable work is already in hand to look at how the Prudential Regime will apply generally. We are now working with CoSLA and local authorities to ensure that the housing dimension is fed into this process. A significant issue covered in Section 3 of this paper is what business planning information local authorities and the Scottish Executive will need to have in order to reach informed decisions about the use of the new prudential borrowing powers. Views are being sought on this.

Inviting ideas of innovative funding and management approaches.

This part of the consultation is an opportunity for respondents to offer thoughts on innovative or radical approaches to (1) the funding of social housing and/or (2) the management of the social housing stock. While not being prescriptive about the alternatives, the Minister made it clear that to be worthwhile they would have to show how they can promote improved tenant involvement, deliver the necessary investment and support effective and transparent management. This part of the consultation is dealt with in Section 4 and is intended to provoke new ideas that may be picked up for further development and discussion. No specific questions are being posed.

Improving the links between housing and regeneration; the Community Ownership Programme and partial transfers.

Section 5 of the paper deals with a series of further announcements that Ms Curran made on 18 March 2003 about measures to improve the links between housing and regeneration investment.

The following sections expand further on each of these areas (apart from the review of the transfer process which is being dealt with separately) and sets out questions or areas where we would like to receive comments. It would be very helpful if respondents structured their responses in line with these questions although we would of course welcome general views in addition.

We have set out at Annex A a timeline showing what we believe to be the key actions that the Scottish Executive, local authorities and RSLs need to consider in terms of responding to the policy developments outlined in this paper.

Responses

Responses are asked for by Monday 30 June 2003 after which responses will be analysed and a summary report produced. All responses will be acknowledged and late responses will be accepted so far as they reasonably can. All responses will be placed in the Scottish Executive library unless respondents clearly indicate that they wish their response to be treated as confidential.

Part or all of this document can be made available in a variety of languages and other formats on request.

The text of this consultation paper can be found at:- http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations/housing3/consultation.asp

Responses should be sent to:

James Hynd
Scottish Executive
Housing Division 1
Area 1-H
Victoria Quay
Edinburgh
EH6 6QQ
Fax 0131 244 5596

Online responses can be made to:- http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations/responses/housing3/responses.asp

Recipients of this consultation include all Scottish local authorities (chief executives, and directors responsible for housing and for finance), CoSLA, SOLACE, all Registered Social Landlords in Scotland, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, the Chartered Institute of Housing in Scotland, Shelter, tenant groups, Council of Mortgage Lenders, the Committee of Scottish Clearing Bankers, CIPFA, Audit Scotland, and Homes for Scotland.

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