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Home > Scoping Paper > Delivering decent homes and thriving neighbourhoods
Regional Priority 4: Delivering decent homes and thriving neighbourhoods
In 2000, the Government set itself the target of ensuring that all
social tenants have a decent home by 2010. The Communities Plan
sets out very clearly the options for achieving the decent homes
target in local authority stock - stock transfer; the Private Finance
Initiative; or, for high performing authorities, Arms Length Management
Organisations (ALMOs). The picture for registered social landlords
is a complex one, but funding requirements for older stock do need
to be addressed at a regional level. Government is also now committed
to improving conditions for vulnerable people living in private
accommodation, historically one of the key issues facing the North
West, which has a high proportion of housing built prior to 1919,
as well as a particular concentration of terraced property.
Experience in the North West has conclusively demonstrated that
investment in property condition alone, while helping address concerns
such as energy efficiency, fuel poverty and some health issues,
is an inadequate and expensive response to the broader sets of issues
often faced by deprived or declining neighbourhoods. The recent
PSA Plus Review emphasised the contribution of decent homes programmes
in the social rented sector to the broader neighbourhood renewal
agenda: "investment in decent homes should take place in
neighbourhoods with sustainable demand in the long term; decent
homes strategies need to be co-ordinated with wider neighbourhood
regeneration efforts; combining strategies will help to satisfy
tenant priorities and deliver sustainable communities".
These principles apply equally across all tenures.
Priority 4.1
As part of broadly based regeneration strategies, improving
the condition of housing stock with a sustainable future, particularly
in areas of concentrated unfitness and disrepair.
Questions
Should single housing pot resources be allocated to help meet
decent homes targets when other sources of funding to achieve this
are available to a local authority ?
What approach should the Board take to stock condition issues in
the private and RSL sectors ?
Is this priority actually only a sub-section of earlier priorities,
particularly as much of the worst condition housing lies within
Pathfinder areas ?
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