Further to point 4 of my recent Crash course in social housing etc, it looks as if they are about to revoke this earlier act of Whitehall-knows-best madness, with all its unintended consequences.
From 24 Dash:
Proposals have finally been tabled to scrap the complex system of cross-subsidies for council housing in England, and allow local authorities to maintain and build homes using their own funds from rents and sales...
Mr Healey said that the four million people who live in England's 1.8 million council properties will get better homes and better services under the new system, which now goes out for consultation with local authorities.
Under the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) system, introduced in 1935, money from rents and sales of land and homes is sent by councils to Whitehall, where the DCLG manages the national housing debt and redistributes funds to the 177 local authority areas according to a complex formula.
The new self-financing system would allow councils to keep their cash and decide for themselves how to spend it on maintenance, refurbishment and repairs of social housing. In return, councils will be asked to take on their share of a £3.65 billion debt* . Town halls will also be able to borrow more cash to fund refurbishment and house-building projects.
"This is a once and for all settlement between central and local government," said Mr Healey, "It will bring council house funding up to date, replacing a system which was introduced before the Second World War. Councils will get the freedom to fund and run their council homes, without central Government subsidy.
"Not a single penny from rents or sales will go to Whitehall and not a single penny will subsidise other councils as the current system dictates... This is a change which councils have been calling for, and which has cross-party support. This is an opportunity for radical change which will allow councils to do much more to provide better services and better meet the needs of local people."
Excellent. One more thing I can tick off from my manifesto. If nothing else, at least it puts local councils on par with Housing Associations.
Also of note is the statistic that "Every year as a country we are raising £6 billion a year from council house rents", i.e. an average weekly rent of £64. I strongly suspect, having calculated this before, that this is the gross figure before deducting Housing Benefit, which 'pays' half of that £6 billion and so isn't real income. If it were up to me, I'd scrap centrally-funded Housing Benefit as well and leave it to councils to sort out as best they can (by hiking rents on their nicer properties, chucking out non-payers or identifying sub-letters, for example).
* Which sounds like a lot, but it works out at about £2,000 per council home.
Big Green Bills
38 minutes ago
4 comments:
Only problem MW is that local authorities are social housing providers and as such come under the Tenants Standards Authority TSA (which replaced the Housing Corporation) and are therefore subject to Audit Commission Reports, TSA rules and all the other b'cratic crap which just drives up costs and expenses.
WFW, sure, there are plenty more layers of crap to get rid of as well, like the 'needocracy' and so on, but that ought to go hand-in-hand with fiscal responsibility.
In which case dear chap, if we need and want fiscal responsibility then we had better make sure you get the keys to No11!
Goodness me! Lets think. I know, we can call it a housing market, and suggest it has established the 'market' value of something.
What a concept. Do think it'll catch on?
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