| Department | |
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| Start date | 12/04/2012 |
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| End date | 05/07/2012 |
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| Type of consultation | White paper |
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| Deadline for comments | 05/07/2012 |
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About the consultation
The way that social housing is provided needs to be transformed to allow it to operate on a sustainable basis and to deliver new and improved homes.
A key to the proposals is that all homes should be brought up to the nationally recognised Decent Homes Standard within 10 years and a number of changes have been set out in the White Paper to achieve this goal.
Download Achieving Decent Homes paper (size 316KB)How to submit comments to the consultation
This consultation is now closed to comments.
Responses to the consultation
What feedback was received?
The main things that people told us during the consultation period were:
- the current system isn’t suitable
- there is a high demand for homes which meet the Decent Homes Standard
- there is a high demand for new social and affordable housing
- people are concerned about rents and affordability
- there is a need to develop and broaden customer services
- the housing trusts prefer “light touch” regulation and want to retain their financial freedom
The Housing Minister has given full consideration to all of your feedback and is now ready to take his proposals forward to the States for debate.
What are we doing about the feedback received?
The Minister's proposals for the Strategic Housing Unit, independent regulator and the new wholly States-owned housing association remain mostly the same. However, to address people’s concerns about the return to the near market rent level of 90%, the Minister has elected to adapt the approach.
He is no longer recommending an immediate return to the near market rent level for all existing tenants and is instead proposing to use this rent policy for new tenancies only.
This means that:
- existing tenants will only pay the (90%) fair rent level if or when they transfer to alternative accommodation. As now, all rents will be subject to an annual inflation based increase
- this proposal will still enable the necessary investment to bring homes up to the Decent Homes Standard within the next 10 years
What happens next?
The Minister will be taking this proposal to the States Assembly to consider in the spring of this year (2012). If the States give their consent to the change, the Minister will then bring enabling laws to the States Assembly in the summer of 2013 to establish the regulator and the basis of the transfer to the new association, with regulations setting the rent policy being brought forward in early 2014. This will allow the establishment of the new housing association in the summer of 2014.
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