Agenda item

To receive a presentation from Julian Chun, Operations Director, Sentinal Housing, James Pennington, Regional Land Director, Thames Valley Housing Association and Robert Mills, Regional Manager, Accent South Housing on the work of their Housing Associations in the Borough.

Robert Mills, Regional Housing Director, Accent, Julian Chun, Operations Director, Sentinal, and James Pennington, Regional Land Director, Thames Valley Housing Association, gave a presentation in respect of the work the three Housing Associations in the region and the current challenges faced by the sector.

The ongoing reform of the welfare system was the most significant challenge currently faced by Housing Associations across the Country.  The introduction of a number of changes including the Spare Room Subsidy, a cap on the maximum amount of benefits that working age people could claim, the introduction of Universal Credit and the introduction of Local Housing Allowances which capped the amount of Housing Benefit paid according to the size of the household instead of the size of the property were resulting in an increasing number of tenants being faced with a shortfall in funding and incurring rent arrears.  Housing Associations were now doing more pre-tenancy work with potential tenants to ensure the home they were looking at was affordable and the tenancy was sustainable before a tenancy agreement was entered into.  However, if rent arrears did occur then Housing Associations worked closely with tenants to manage the debt and recoup the arrears.  Eviction because of rent arrears was usually considered as a last resort with eviction orders only sought if tenants failed to stick to debt management plans agreed with the Housing Association.

In cases of anti-social behaviour robust action was taken.  If an eviction occurred as a result of anti-social behaviour then the tenant was usually deemed to have made themselves intentionally homeless and housing associations no longer had a duty to accommodate them.  Consequently the tenant would then normally have to be housed in the private rented sector.

It was unclear how many Surrey Heath residents would be affected by the introduction of market rent for high income social tenants i.e. those tenancies where the annual household income of the two highest earners in the household was over £30,000 (Over £40,000 per annum in London).  An initial survey of Sentinal’s tenants had found that 15% of their current tenant base would be affected by the changes.  Most housing associations only asked for information pertaining to the financial circumstances of a tenant before a tenancy was granted and tenancy agreements might have to be changed in order to force tenants to reveal their earnings on an ongoing basis.

Work was taking place to increase the number of affordable homes available in the Borough and Housing Associations were looking at different ways to increase their stock levels; for example Thames Valley Housing had recently started work on the Opal development in London.  Whilst this was a commercial property development the profits from the development would be used to finance affordable housing elsewhere in the region.  It was recognised that where there was a requirement for a development to provide only one or two units of affordable housing provision this could make the development unviable or the additional costs of service charges could made the affordable property unaffordable and in these cases housing associations often took commuted sums from the developers to enable them to provide the affordable housing in a larger block elsewhere.

The Committee thanked Robert Mills, Julian Chun and James Pennington for their informative briefing.