Green Homes Grants Cost £1,000 In Admin For Each Household That Benefited

A scheme to make homes cosier and greener racked up administration costs of £1,000 for each household that benefited, the Whitehall spending watchdog said. The flagship green homes grant scheme was rushed, caused frustration for homeowners and installers and had lower benefits in cutting carbon and creating jobs than it could have done, the National Audit Office (NAO) said. The programme was launched in September 2020 as a six-month “green” pandemic recovery measure, and closed in March 2021 having been extended and then curtailed again in the face of problems with its delivery. Read more on the ITV website.

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-09-07/green-homes-grants-cost-1000-in-admin-for-each-household-that-benefited--nao

None Of Pledged Starter Homes Built, Says Watchdog

A government plan to create 200,000 new homes for first-time buyers has resulted in no homes being built, the National Audit Office has found. Announced in 2014, "starter homes" were meant to be aimed at those under the age of 40 and sold at a 20% discount. But legislation to take the project forward was never passed. MHCLG spent some £174m on acquiring and preparing sites.Labour called the policy a total failure, but the government said it had a "great track record" for house building. Read more on the BBC website.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50296672

Help To Buy ‘Helps Those Who Can Help Themselves’

Help To Buy will have tied up some £29bn in cash terms by the time in concludes in 2023 – but the value of what it has achieved is uncertain when many of those helped could have bought anyway, a Commons report reveals. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says Help To Buy has not made homes more affordable or addressed other pressing housing problems such as the planning system and homelessness. In June, the National Audit Office released its own report into Help To Buy that found almost a third of buyers could have purchased a property they wanted without the help of the scheme. Read the PAC report on the Parliament website.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmpubacc/2046/204602.htm

Help To Buy Scheme Yet To Prove Worth, Says NAO Report

Help To Buy has increased home ownership and housing supply, but many of those using the scheme would have been able to buy a home anyway, according to a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) which has questioned the scheme’s overall value for money. According to MHCLG’s own independent research, 37% of households would not have been able to buy any property without the scheme. The research also found around 60% of buyers could have bought a property without of Help To Buy. It also highlighted that 65,000 households could have purchased a property they wanted without the scheme. Overall take-up of the scheme is said to have been low in less affordable areas where the ratio of house prices to average earnings is higher. Read more on 24housing.

https://www.24housing.co.uk/news/governments-help-to-buy-scheme-yet-to-prove-worth-says-nao-report/

Government To Miss 2020 Housing Target By Five Years, Says Watchdog

The Government is likely to miss its 2020 housing target by at least five years, a watchdog has said. A National Audit Office (NAO) report has found the sale of public land is not expected to have released enough space for even half the target number of homes. Instead of 160,000 homes, the Government expects to be able to have space for just 65,000 – 41% of the target – and does not expect to reach the 160,000 target until after 2025. Although the Government has so far failed to find enough land to build the promised homes, the report said, it will still meet a target to raise £5 billion through the sell-off of public land. Read more on the AOL website.

https://www.aol.co.uk/news/2019/05/02/government-to-miss-2020-housing-target-by-five-years-says-watch/?guccounter=1

Government Housing Delivery Plan 'Flawed'

The government's housing planning system is unable to demonstrate it is meeting housing demand effectively, public spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) has said. The government wants 300,000 new homes a year from the mid-2020s onwards. The MHCLG has a standard method, developed in 2017, for local authorities to assess the number of new homes needed. The NAO says this has weaknesses. It says these weaknesses will result in a cut in the number of planned new homes in five of nine regions, while in London, the method will mean that new builds need to double in order to meet what the department thinks is needed. Read more on the BBC website.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47157413

Mcvey Admits Ongoing Problems With Universal Credit

The welfare secretary Esther McVey has admitted there are continuing problems with the much-criticised universal credit system and signalled that further changes are in the pipeline. She also said DWP ministers and officials needed to listen more carefully to claimants, campaigners and frontline workers when they reported problems and complaints. The DWP was heavily criticised for its “culture of indifference” in a scathing report by a cross-party group of MPs, which accused it of refusing to accept expert advice and slowness to act when policy errors were identified. The DWP needed to reach out to, and learn from, all organisations that could help officials design and implement a system that fully supported claimants, she said, such as the National Audit Office. Read more on the Guardian website.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/19/esther-mcvey-admits-ongoing-problems-with-universal-credit

Tories Turn Fire On NAO Over Damning UC Report

Forced on the defensive by the damning NAO assessment of Universal Credit (UC) Tories turned their fire on – the NAO. With a little of the ‘the last Labour government’ thrown in. Architect of the ‘reform’ Iain Duncan Smith led the charge calling the NAO report  – which branded UC a major failure of public policy – as a “shoddy piece of work” that didn’t account for a series of issues. “Not least of which are that the Treasury signed off annual recurring savings of £8bn and, more importantly, that the changes last November and December have made a huge difference to people’s lives,” he said. Read more on 24housing.

https://www.24housing.co.uk/news/tories-turn-fire-on-nao-over-damning-uc-report/

Universal Credit Has Not Delivered Value For Money

Universal Credit has not delivered value for money and it is uncertain if it ever will, the National Audit Office (NAO) has concluded. The DWP has estimated it can make an annual net saving of £8bn, but in a critical report published today the NAO said this “remains unproven”. The DWP has spent £1.9bn to date on the rollout of the new welfare system, which replaces six means-tested benefits. This £1.9bn spend is made up of £1.3bn of investment and £0.6bn on running costs, the NAO said. Download the report from the NAO website.

https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Rolling-out-Universal-Credit.pdf

Government Has ‘Not Evaluated’ The Impact Of Its Reforms On Homelessness

Government has not evaluated the impact of its welfare reforms on homelessness, or the impact of the mitigations that it has put in place, according to the National Audit Office (NAO). An NAO report says the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) does not have a published cross-government strategy to prevent and tackle homelessness – despite acknowledging the scale of the challenge and plans to improve the data the government holds on homelessness. Download the report from the NAO website.

NAO To Re-Assess Universal Credit Roll-Out

The roll-out of Universal Credit (UC) is getting a once-over – for a third time. The National Audit Office (NAO) confirmed it is to undertake another assessment of the roll-out plan after two previous reports found poor performance on delivery of an ‘over ambitious’ programme. The new NAO study will examine whether the DWP is on course to deliver UC in accordance with its plans, assessing whether there are early signs that UC is delivering its objectives, and what impact it is having both on claimants and local stakeholders. Two previous NAO reports – in 2013 and 2014 – identified key areas of poor performance hindering progress. Read more on 24housing.

Housing In England Report

A new report from the National Audit Office (NAO) comments on the government's ambition of delivering one million new homes by 2020. Surprisingly, it concludes that it does not require a substantial increase in current levels of housebuilding. The report concludes that:

·         The need for housing in England has in recent years grown faster than its supply.

·         To keep up, housebuilding needs to increase across the country.

·         Housing has become more affordable for existing homeowners.

·         In contrast, social rents have risen faster than wages.

·         Housing is less affordable for a first-time buyer now than it was in the 1990s.

·         Homelessness has also increased over the past five years.

Download the report form the NAO website.

PRS Rent Increases Not Overtaking Wages

The cost of private rented housing has largely followed changes in earnings across England, in stark contrast to the social rented sector where rents have increased faster than wages. The new report from the National Audit Office said that “since 2006, the cost of private rented accommodation has broadly followed changes in earnings across England” whilst “social housing rents have increased faster than earnings since 2001-02.” It does, however note that the exception to this is in London, where rents are rising much faster. Read more on the RLA website.

Government Will Miss Pledge To Build 1m Homes By May 2020

Ministers have been accused by Labour of dropping their promise to build a million homes in this parliament. The party said the government was no longer aiming to meet its pledge by May 2020, as a National Audit Office (NAO) report showed the target for completion was December 2020 – a delay of eight months. The NAO suggested the government is on course to exceed the goal by the end of 2020, which will require 174,000 new homes a year until then. Last year, around 190,000 homes were added to the housing stock. But Labour suggested that the CLG should have been more transparent about the longer timescale for completing the pledge. Read more on the Guardian website.

Social Rents Have Increased Faster Than Earnings

Social housing rents have increased faster than earnings over the last 15 years, according to a National Audit Office (NAO) report. The report into the housing market and policy in England said between 2001/02 and 2014/15 typical full-time earnings increased by 33% but typical rents for council properties increased by 79% and housing association rents increased by 72% in the same period. The NAO said different government departments can have “conflicting objectives”. An example was the introduction of the 1% rent reduction, announced by the Treasury, which reduced the ability of housing associations to scale up their development plans and might impact the Department for Communities and Local Government’s plan to build one million homes by 2020. Download the report from the NAO website.

No Evidence Welfare Sanctions Work

Sanctions on welfare payments which have allegedly caused thousands of claimants to fall into hardship and depression are being handed out without evidence that they actually work, Whitehall’s official spending watchdog has found. The DWP is also failing to monitor thousands of people whose benefits are being cut or withheld while many are being pushed outside the benefits system, said the National Audit Office. Auditors concluded there has been a failure to measure whether the government is saving money while the application of the sanctions regime varies across the country and from job centre to job centre.  The report has been seized upon by critics of the government’s sanctions regime who say it is punitive, wasteful and not aimed at finding people work. Read more on the Guardian website.

Affordable Housing 'Greatest Barrier' To Refugee Resettlement

A lack of affordable housing is “one of the greatest barriers” to housing Syrian refugees, with the benefit cap pricing them out of London and the South East. This is the warning from councils expressed in a National Audit Office (NAO) report looking at the UK government’s flagship effort to take in 20,000 Syrian refugees. The report looking at the progress of the Syrian Vulnerable Person Resettlement Programme said councils are worried a reduction on the cap in benefits to £23,000 a year in London and £20,000 outside could mean private rented housing “would not be affordable to many refugees”. Download a copy of the report from the NAO website.

Labour Calls For Answers Over RTB Fraud Claims

Labour has tabled urgent questions and threatened to call for a National Audit Office investigation over Inside Housing’s research into Right to Buy fraud. John Healey, shadow minister for housing and planning, wrote to communities secretary Greg Clark today with nine urgent questions on the level of Right to Buy fraud. It followed a joint investigation by BBC Radio 4 and Inside Housing which revealed 16% of homes sold by 10 councils were bought by tenants on housing benefit. This does not prove fraud, but is a “red flag”, as it demonstrates someone else is covering the cost of buying the home. Read more on Inside Housing.

Councils Increasingly Look To HRAs For Capital Spend

Councils are increasingly funding capital spending through their Housing Revenue Accounts (HRAs) or major repairs reserves as government funding has decreased, a National Audit Office (NAO) report has found. Since 2010/11, funding from the HRA or major repairs reserves to support capital spending has increased by 58%. In 2010/11 £1.4bn came from HRAs, compared to £2.2bn in 2014/15. The NAO’s report looks at how councils’ capital funding and spending has changed since 2010, when the government started to reduce funding for local government. It found there are increasing pressures from capital spending and if authorities “cannot reduce their capital costs… it will place further pressure on their revenue spending”. Download the report from the NAO website.

Green Deal Scheme Did Not Deliver Energy Savings

An abandoned government programme to insulate UK homes cost taxpayers nearly £400m and did not deliver energy or carbon savings, a report by official auditors has found. The green deal scheme was launched in January 2013 with the intention of handing out loans to improve domestic energy efficiency. It folded in July 2015 despite claims by David Cameron that his would be “the greenest government ever”. The National Audit Office has examined the scheme for the first time and found that the Department for Energy and Climate Change spent £240m on the scheme. Another £154m has been spent on the green deal home improvement fund which was set up to provide subsidies for efficiency measures, auditors found. Read more on the Guardian website.