Update on the Housing and Planning Act 2016

Doug Thorpe reports:

The Housing and Planning Act 2016 received Royal Assent on 12 May 2016. The House of Lords had passed a number of amendments to the Bill. But after a process of the amendments going back and forth between Commons and Lords (official known as ‘ping pong’) the Lords agreed to drop (or not ‘insist on’) most of these.

Among the changes that survived were:

• Introducing fixed-term tenancies for social housing tenants of 10 years in certain circumstances, as opposed to the two to five years originally proposed
• Introducing a taper on the so-called  “pay to stay” proposals which will see rents increase at a rate of 15p for every £1 earned above the threshold of £40,000
• Increasing the £40,000 pay to stay threshold in line with inflation

But substantially the most of the key Government proposals are in the final legislation which will be implemented no earlier than 1 April 2017. The Act will still:

• Replace the obligation to build homes for social rent with a duty to build discounted ‘starter homes’ for sale capped at £450,000 in Greater London and £250,000 (to first time buyers under 40) across the rest of England, in effect offering state subsidies for private investors, who may then sell their assets at full market value within five years of their purchase.
• Extend the Right to Buy on a voluntary basis to housing associations, effectively overseeing the further decline in the number of homes for social rent.
• Compel local authorities to sell ‘high value’ housing, thereby exploiting London’s exaggerated property values either to transfer public housing into private hands or to free up its coveted land for property developers.
• Local Authorities will be levied to pay for these discounts regardless of whether they have sold their ‘higher value’ properties. Civil Servants will calculate how much they expect each Council to raise through Higher Value sales, and levy a charge to that amount whether or not houses are actually sold.
• Force so-called ‘high income’ tenants with a total household income over £30,000 in England and £40,000 in London to pay market rents, targeting low-paid working families, those on the minimum wage or claiming disability allowances who cannot afford either to Pay to Stay in their existing homes. For Councils the receipts will go to the treasury. This will be voluntary for Housing Associations but they will be allowed to keep the receipts as an incentive to implement it. Social Landlords will be able to apply to HMRC to get information about tenants’ income.
• Housing Association rents will be cut by 1% (unless tenants are hit by Pay to Stay).
• Grant planning permission in principle for housing estates designated as such to be redeveloped as ‘brownfield land’. In Principle Planning permission will automatically be granted for demolition and redevelopment, and local planners won’t be able to demand more than technical conditions. David Cameron has recently gone to press to spell out the Tories plans to demolish 100 council estates, like Broadwater Farm in Haringey.
• Phase out secure tenancies and their succession to children and replace them with 2-10 year tenancies, after which tenants will have to reapply. This will apply not only to new tenants, but also existing tenants who apply for a move; whether women fleeing domestic violence, families needing larger homes, or people wanting to downsize to avoid the Bedroom Tax. These tenants will be faced with a choice of staying in unsuitable or dangerous housing, or losing their security of tenure.
• Travellers will be redefined for housing purposes to exclude many travelling families from housing assistance and changing planning rules to reduce permanent sites.

Many of the provisions of the Act require secondary legislation or Orders to set regulations. This process will offer some scope for further amendments to detail.

But the main opposition to the Act now passes from Parliament to the streets, estates and Council chambers. We need to build a nationwide campaign to resist the implementation of the Act. This movement also needs to link up with campaigns about Benefits, for Private rent caps, and homelessness.

The Kill the Housing Bill Campaign will continue. In a recent statement the Campaign said it would:

• Continue to push for changes when the substantial elements of the Bill contained in secondary legislation come back to Parliament.
• Work with councils and housing associations, trade unions and others to challenge the Bill legally and in every other way.
• Hold urgent discussions at local and regional level about the practical implementation of the Bill, and in particular resisting changes to tenancy agreements that would require tenants to provide income data for ‘Pay to Stay’, and refusal to include estates on ‘Brownfield’ registers.
• Call on local councils to continue to issue permanent secure tenancies and refuse to sell-off empty council homes.
• Support tenants to organise together in every local area to boycott the pay-to-stay tax, resist evictions, and block regeneration schemes that lead to social cleansing.
• Organise a second national demonstration against the Bill on 18^th
• Call on Labour and other opposition parties to confirm their support for repeal of the Housing and Planning Bill.

A discussion is taking place within the campaign about whether the demand to Local Councils should go further and demand that Councils refuse to implement the Act.

The Campaign has called a Strategy Meeting on 21 May 10am Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 235 Shaftsbury Avenue, London WC2 8EP

Left Unity will continue to work with the Kill the Housing Bill campaign and other housing campaigns including the Radical Housing Network and the Northern Housing Network. Within these campaigns we need to continue to raise positive demands, for rent controls, secure public and private tenancies, land and planning reform, rights for travelling communities, and for a massive program of building new public housing under democratic control.