Closing ALMOs Produces Mixed Results For Housing Services

The number of ALMOs has halved over the past decade, with a number of high-profile closures in the past two years. Local authorities often cite efficiency savings and performance improvements as reasons for taking the service back in house, but Inside Housing’s research suggests the picture is mixed. While some authorities saw improvements in areas such as tenant satisfaction, Housing Revenue Account (HRA) finances and re-let times for empty homes after shutting down their ALMOs, others have seen declines in performance. Read more on Inside Housing.

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insight/almo-closures-how-are-they-affecting-services-60071

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.

New Ten-Year Deal For ALMO

Haringey Council is set to renew its arm’s-length management organisation’s contract for a further 10 years. The Labour-led council is expected to rubber-stamp a proposal to extend the contract of Homes for Haringey for 10 years after the current deal expires on 31 March next year. It also agreed to set up a development vehicle to refurbish stock and build new homes. The decisions follow recommendations from a review by a cross-party panel of councillors and tenants.  The review said Homes for Haringey, which manages more than 20,000 council homes, had shown strong tenant satisfaction ratings, strong tenant involvement and the ability to “move quickly to deliver and can make decisions without the constraints of the lengthy local authority process”. It also said the ALMO has a “significant record of financial savings and efficiencies”. The report said the ALMO had made savings of £3.2m in 2014/15. Read more on the Haringey Council website.

DWP Cuts Put Government's Welfare Reforms at Risk

The government's ambitious welfare reform strategy is at risk because of the speed and depth of the cuts imposed on the DWP, according to a leaked internal review. The document reveals that the DWP is struggling to meet "extremely challenging" demands for over £1bn of efficiency savings over the next two years and these pressures could disrupt plans to roll out benefits reforms. Too crude an approach to future cuts would affect the quality and capacity of the DWP's "public-facing" services to vulnerable pensioners, jobseekers and benefit claimants, it warns. It is understood that separate internal DWP modelling shows that, as universal credit is expanded in the months before the general election next year, the cuts will diminish the department's capacity to keep on top of rising customer demand in jobcentres and benefit offices.  Read more on the Guardian website.