Government Scrapping Affordable Starter Homes ‘Deplorable’, Say MPs

 A government plan to deliver discounted starter homes has left 85,000 young people waiting in vain for an affordable place to live, in a policy branded “deplorable” by a cross-party committee of MPs. The 2015 initiative to build 200,000 homes and sell them at a 20% discount was formally scrapped this year without a single home being built. But £173m was spent buying land, a damning report by the Commons public accounts committee said. It is now on course to deliver only 6,600 homes and is being replaced by a new scheme. Read more on the Guardian website.

 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/dec/09/government-scrapping-affordable-starter-homes-deplorable-say-mps

MHCLG Says Publishing Help To Buy Forecasts ‘Not Appropriate’

MHCLG says it is “not appropriate” to set out annualised net forecast expenditure or costs relating to Help To Buy because they are not reflective of the actual cost and return to government. This stance was upheld by Housing Minister Christopher Pincher in response to a written Commons question from Clive Betts (Lab – Sheffield South-East). In September, the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) published a report saying Help To Buy will have tied up some £29bn in cash terms by the time it concludes in 2023 – but the value of what it has achieved is uncertain when many of those helped could have bought anyway. Read more on 24housing.

https://www.24housing.co.uk/news/mhclg-says-publishing-help-to-buy-forecasts-not-appropriate/

Survey Exposes Extent Of Unawareness Over Help To Buy Schemes

Half of adults in the UK (47%) are unaware that there are schemes to help first-time buyers get onto the housing ladder, according to new research from online mortgage broker Trussle. The national study surveyed 2,001 people UK wide and found widespread confusion over the Help To Buy ISA, Help to Buy Equity Loan, and Shared Ownership schemes. In September, the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said Help To Buy ‘helps those who can help themselves’ in balancing the scheme, increasing new-home supply against it not making homes more affordable. Read more on 24housing.

https://www.24housing.co.uk/news/survey-exposes-extent-of-unawareness-over-help-to-buy-schemes/

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

Government ‘Squanders’ Once-In-A-Generation Chance To Ease Housing Crisis

Government has squandered a once-in-a-generation chance to alleviate the housing crisis by failing to develop a strategy for public land disposal, a key Commons committee says. In a warning shot to a new Communities Secretary, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says it is unacceptable that MHCLG pays so little attention to how the release of public land could be used to deliver affordable homes, including social homes for rent. The resulting report says release of public land is not translating into enough actual homes for those who need them. Read more on 24housing.

https://www.24housing.co.uk/news/government-squanders-once-in-a-generation-chance-to-ease-housing-crisis/

MHCLG Housing Target Currently Unachievable

The government does not yet have “all the ingredients” it needs to hit its target of 300,000 new homes by 2025, according to a leading civil servant. Permanent secretary at the MHCLG Melanie Dawes has told MPs that the target is “very challenging”. Announcements in the Spending Review were key to working out how far the department could go to achieving its target, she added. Dawes told the Public Accounts Committee: “We have got a pretty comprehensive strategy but wouldn’t say at this stage that we have all the ingredients we need to get the 300,000 on the table. In particular, we don’t have information yet on our capital budgets beyond this Spending Review period.” Read more on the Public Finance website.

https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2019/04/top-civil-servant-admits-government-housing-target-unachievable1

CLG Urged To Shape Up Over New Homes

A government that spends around £21bn each year on housing benefit does not know what contribution this money makes to the supply of new housing. Now, a key Commons committee has put the CLG on notice, wanting a report back within a year on identifying metrics that can be used to establish the full impact of housing benefit on building new homes and scope for this financing to be used more innovatively to increase housing supply and home ownership. The Public Accounts Committee says it specifically wants to see research into the estimated £8bn in housing benefit a year spent on subsidising rents paid by tenants in the private rented sector.  Read more on 24housing.

'Slow Start' For Homes On Public Land Plan

The government has made a "slow start" towards its promise to release enough of its surplus land to build 160,000 new homes by 2020, MPs say. The Public Accounts Committee said progress had been made but warned that many sites earmarked were still in use. After a year of the programme, the government had disposed of 5% of the required land, it said. The government said it had "acted quickly to free up public land", enabling 100,000 homes since 2010. In its report, the Public Accounts Committee said the government had improved on a previous scheme by monitoring the number of homes built as a result of the land sales and setting out each department's responsibilities. Read more on the BBC website.

Green Deal Energy Loans Had 'Abysmal' Take-Up

The government's energy efficiency loan scheme had an "abysmal" take-up rate because it had not been tested with consumers, MPs have said. The "Green Deal" ended last year after providing just £50m in 14,000 loans to households to boost energy efficiency. That was far less than the £1.1bn predicted by the government, with each loan costing taxpayers £17,000. In a highly critical report, the Public Accounts Committee said projections for the scheme were "wildly optimistic". The MPs said the Department of Energy and Climate Change's figures gave a completely misleading picture of the scheme's prospects to Parliament. Read more on the BBC website.

Right To Buy Extension Plan “Speculative And Vague”

The Public Accounts Committee has slammed the government’s “entirely speculative” approach to its plan to extend Right to Buy discounts to 1.3 million housing association tenants. In an unusual step, the cross-party committee examined the policy ahead of implementation, scrutinising information from the CLG. Publishing its findings, the PAC highlighted a lack of clarity around how the policy would be funded or what its wider financial impact would be. PAC chair Meg Hillier said the government should be “embarrassed” by the report’s findings. “Extending Right to Buy will affect many thousands of people yet the department has failed to provide basic information to support its stated aims. Instead we have heard vague assertions about what it will accomplish and how,” she said. Read more on the Public Finance website.

England Could Lose 300,000 Socially Rented Homes By 2020

An estimated 300,000 socially rented homes could be lost in England by 2020. The Government's drive to boost home ownership will radically change the housing landscape across the country, MPs in the Public Accounts Committee were told. The extension of right-to-buy to housing association tenants combined with other policies to increase owner occupancy will radically reduce the number of socially rented homes. Terrie Alafat, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing, told the committee: "We have done some analysis looking forward on the loss of social-rented housing, based on right-to-buy and the current policy, the proposed extension, the shift from social to affordable rent and then sales. And by 2020 we think there will be a loss of about 300,000-odd socially rented homes across the country.” Read more on the BT website.

Just 200 Homes Have Been Built On Public Land Sold Off By The Government

Just 200 homes have been built on public land sold off by the Government over the last five years, new figures have revealed. Despite the land having a capacity for 109,000 homes, the only record of any homebuilding points to a fraction of them being actually constructed, MPs on the Public Accounts Committee heard. The statistics came just weeks after David Cameron pledged to build hundreds of thousands of homes every year, as he battles to make housing a key legacy of his premiership. Shadow Communities Secretary John Healey told HuffPost UK: "As usual on housing, the Prime Minister has promised big but delivered little". Read more on the Huffington Post website.

Care Leavers' Housing Poor Say MPs

Too many care leavers live in unsuitable accommodation, MPs have warned. A report on the outcomes of young people leaving the care system by the Commons Public Accounts Committee was heavily critical of services and support. They also concluded the quality and cost of care was too variable and they could find no clear relationship between the two. Poor housing was one of the committee’s biggest concerns and the MPs urged the Department for Education to work more closely with local government, as well as those running children’s care homes. A key problem is finding suitable residential properties that meet need, regulations and do not face opposition from local residents. Read more on the Parliament website.

CLG Slammed Over Failure to Monitor Housebuilding

MPs have slammed the CLG for failing to monitor the new homes being built on public land that it had released for development. The Public Accounts Committee questioned CLG permanent secretary Melanie Dawes on the findings of a National Audit Office (NAO) report, which committee member Stewart Jackson described as ‘one of the most damning reports that we have had before us in the last five years’. Outlining the ‘pretty extraordinary’ findings, chair Meg Hillier said: ‘As a department, you did not know whether land was being sold at the right price, how many homes should have been built and how many homes have been built, and we will not know for some time – perhaps before the end of the decade – whether the target has been met.’ Read more on the Local Government Chronicle website.

Treasury Has Not Signed Off On Duncan Smith's Universal Credit

The Treasury has still not signed off on the government's troubled universal credit benefits reform, Sir Bob Kerslake, the head of the civil service, has revealed. He made the admission that the project was being drip-fed money by the Treasury after Margaret Hodge, the chair of the Commons public accounts committee, repeatedly pressed senior civil servants about its financial status. It the latest sign that the Treasury is keeping a very close eye on universal credit, the responsibility of work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, after it was criticised by the National Audit Office for its "weak management, ineffective control and poor governance". Read more on the Guardian website.

Help To Buy: MPs Question £10bn Cost and Impact on Housing Shortage

The government has yet to demonstrate that its flagship Help to Buy mortgage guarantee policy is providing value for money, an influential committee of MPs has found. The Commons public accounts committee (PAC) has warned that the scheme – under which government equity loans finance up to 20% of the purchase price of homes worth up to £600,000 – creates a medium and long-term risk to the taxpayer in the shape of a £10bn portfolio of loans that will impose a heavy administrative burden for decades to come. In a new report the spending watchdog says the scheme was introduced smoothly and quickly in 2013 and helped 13,000 home-buyers within nine months. But it notes that the CLG violated Treasury guidelines by failing to carry out any assessment of alternative options before going ahead with the scheme. Read the report on the PAC website.

DWP on Verge of Meltdown over Big Welfare Projects

Department for Work and Pensions is facing "meltdown" over three of its biggest projects, Margaret Hodge, chairman of the Commons public spending watchdog, has said. Ahead of a damning report on government contracts with private firms, Hodge singled out the DWP as a department particularly struggling with the delivery of welfare changes, which involve managing a relationship with private IT contractors, back-to-work providers and benefit assessors. The public accounts committee report turns up the pressure on ministers to allow all government contracts to be subject to freedom of information (FOI) laws and examined by the National Audit Office (NAO). Read more on the Guardian website.

Work Doesn't Pay For Some People after Council Tax Policy Change

Some working people are losing 97p of every £1 earned after being hit by a combination of welfare cuts, a committee of MPs has found.  The public accounts committee warned that cuts to council tax benefit means ‘work does not pay’ for those worse affected by the reforms. In a damning report, the scrutiny group attacked the DWP for ‘not fully understanding’ the impact of council tax benefit cuts when combined with other welfare reforms. Read more on the Parliament website.

Committee Publishes Report on the Early Progress of Universal Credit

The cross-party Public Accounts Committee, chaired by Margaret Hodge MP, has released a critical report examining government progress in delivering Universal Credit and the problems there have been in implementing the programme. The Committee found serious problems with the IT development and the management of the Universal Credit programme, saying in its report that:

·         it is highly likely that a substantial part of the expenditure on IT development for Universal Credit will have to be written off - up to £300 million.

·         oversight of the Universal Credit programme has been characterised by a failure to understand properly the nature and enormity of the task, a failure to monitor and challenge progress regularly, and a failure to intervene promptly when problems arose.

The report outlines a number of recommendations for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to consider.  Download a copy of the report from the Parliament website.