Universal Credit Toolkit Launched

The DWP have released a ‘Toolkit’ for organisations to help explain the Universal Credit to people in receipt of benefits. The toolkit comes in three parts;

• Universal Credit: an introduction – a guide to help you prepare future claimants for the changes that Universal Credit brings
• Claiming Universal Credit – the claim process for claimants in our Pathfinder areas
• Universal Credit claim journey – the claim journey that the first Universal Credit claimants in our Pathfinder areas are going through

and can be downloaded from the DWP website.

Toolkit Helps Councils Plan Housing for Elderly

A consortium of housing providers has launched a toolkit to help local authorities plan for housing an ageing population. Housing in later life: planning ahead for specialist housing for older people is designed to highlight the benefits of specialist housing for older people and to encourage planners to join up housing, planning and social care policies. Download the toolkit from the Housing LIN website.

Shapps: Powers over Regeneration Will Remain With Communities

Grant Shapps has insisted that communities will be kept firmly in the driving seat and able to determine the future of their local areas. In his response to a report from the CLG select committee, Mr Shapps rejected the committee's call for a top-down national strategy for regeneration, insisting that decisions on regeneration activities and schemes should rest with local people. He has published a refreshed regeneration toolkit, highlighting the range of powers and tools devolved from Whitehall to Town Halls, businesses and residents themselves to drive the regeneration they want and need in their areas. New tools introduced over the past year include:
*greater freedoms for cities - bespoke "City Deals" to help England's eight core cities to create new jobs and generate economic growth
*boost for housing development - including a £420 million Get Britain Building scheme which will help get stalled developments back on track; and over £150 million to help bring empty homes back into use
*The Localism Act, including new community rights, neighbourhood planning, the general power of competence, and discretionary business rate discounts
Download a copy of the toolkit from the CLG website.

HCA Publishes Bidding Guidance for Community Housing Schemes

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has published a toolkit designed to help partners put communities in charge of development in their area – along with guidance on how community-led groups can apply for funding to take on development themselves. Part of the Government’s recent Housing Strategy, the HCA has published the bidding guidance and criteria on how community-led groups can apply for funding to take forward their own housing and regeneration projects. These groups could include co-operatives, mutuals, co-housing, self build, Community Land Trusts and the emerging Community Right to Build. Funding is available as part of the Affordable Homes Programme, which aims to deliver up to 80,000 affordable homes by 2015, and is part of the HCA’s enabling and investment role and commitment to localism. Read more on the HCA website.

Empty Property – Parliamentary Written Answer

Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what assessment he has made of progress on his Department's policy to return empty homes to use.
Grant Shapps: Through the New Homes Bonus we have introduced a powerful new incentive scheme, for tackling empty homes. In the first year alone, around 16,000 long-term empty homes were brought back into use and rewarded through the New Homes Bonus scheme. In addition, we have set aside £100 million from the Affordable Homes Programme to bring empty homes back into use as affordable housing. This funding will be available from April 2012 until March 2015 and we will shortly be publishing the detailed bidding guidance to enable both registered providers of social housing and community and voluntary groups to apply. We expect that this will generate innovative good practice as well as bringing at least 3,300 empty homes back into use. We have also worked with the Homes and Communities Agency to launch an online Empty Homes Toolkit(1) and an interactive mapping toolkit(2 )which provide information and practical advice on tackling empty homes. The Empty Homes Toolkit is the most popular resource on the agency website and is one of the top 10 most popular pages on the site.
(1) http://www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/news/new-toolkits-tackle-englands-734000-empty-homes
(2) This toolkit is available to local authorities.

HCA under Fire over 'Bizarre' Empty Homes Map Rules

An empty homes map issued by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) cannot be accessed by any housing association, it has been revealed. The Empty Homes Agency – which aims to create new homes by bringing empty properties back into use – has called the restricted access to the map a “nonsensical bureaucratic rule”. The HCA explained that the map, also called the Empty Homes GIS toolkit, “brings together publicly available data from a range of sources to enable local authorities and registered providers to target and tackle this issue within their area”. But the data is only accessible to government agencies through a secure log-in. The Empty Homes Agency explained the map is a “goldmine of information that could be invaluable to housing associations and other affordable housing providers to help get empty homes back into use”. The toolkit allows users to see the density of empty homes across England alongside other useful statistical data to build a picture of development and better inform investment decisions. Read more on the Empty Homes website.

New Online Toolkits to Tackle Scandal of Empty Homes

Communities Minister Andrew Stunell has launched two new online toolkits to help local councils and communities better identify the empty homes in their area and bring them back into use. The launch is part of a week of intensive action by the Minister, to step up work across the country to tackle the 'scandal' of the country's 300,000 empty homes, which if occupied by average sized families would give around 700,000 more people a home of their own. The Geographical Information System (GIS) Empty Homes Mapping Toolkit, which plots the location of long term empty homes in private ownership across the country, has been developed to allow councils to pinpoint empty homes 'hot spots' in their area, and work with the landlords and local community to bring the derelict properties back into use. The Empty Homes Knowledge Toolkit will be a new 'one-stop shop', giving local authorities, housing associations, empty property owners, landlords and the wider community access to everything they need to know about bringing properties back into use, including the legislative frameworks, partnership building and investment mechanisms. Find out more on the HCA website.

More Effective Responses to Anti-Social Behaviour - A Consultation

This consultation asks for your opinions on government plans to streamline the toolkit used to tackle anti-social behaviour, so that the police and partners have faster, more flexible tools. These, plus more effective sanctions, will help professionals and, where necessary the courts, stop anti-social behaviour earlier, and better protect victims and communities. The proposals include:
* repealing the ASBO and other court orders and replacing them with two new tools that bring together restrictions on future behaviour and support to address underlying problems
* ensuring there are powerful incentives on perpetrators to stop behaving anti-socially
* bringing together many of the existing tools for dealing with place-specific anti-social behaviour
* bringing together existing police dispersal powers for anti-social behaviour into a single police power
* making the informal and out-of-court tools for dealing with anti-social behaviour more rehabilitative and restorative
* introducing a Community Trigger that gives victims and communities the right to require agencies to deal with persistent anti-social behaviour.
Download a copy of the consultation from the Home Office website.

New TSA Tenant Insight Toolkit

The TSA has published a toolkit for social housing providers which explains how to develop effective insight and translate it into positive benefits - for residents and landlords. The toolkit, which was developed by HouseMark and the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), is aimed at all registered providers of social housing, large and small, whether just getting started or more developed in their approach to profiling and insight. It focuses on a number of building blocks including:
• creating the right culture
• setting insight objectives
• reviewing and collecting information
• using the insight to take action
Download the toolkit from the TSA website by clicking on the logo below.

Toolkit to Help Tenants Write Annual Reports

HouseMark has written a toolkit to help tenants and landlords produce 'fit for purpose' annual reports. The "annual report to tenants" is a key component of the TSA's regulatory framework. Although the social housing sector is in a period of change, the TSA and its regulatory framework are still in place and the TSA expects providers to issue annual reports to their tenants by 1st October 2010. The toolkit:
*is intended for people involved in producing annual reports - for example, governing bodies, senior officers and tenants
*builds on existing good practice in terms of reporting to tenants
*is not regulatory guidance or meant in any way to be prescriptive - you take from it only what you need.
The toolkit is available on the HouseMark website.