The Social Housing Green Paper - discussion paper

18 September 2018

The Government’s Social Housing Green Paper – A New Deal for Social Housing – was published on 14 August 2018.

This discussion paper outlines the key issues, risks and areas of opportunity for housing associations in the Green Paper. It intends to be our starting point for a conversation with our members, setting out the Federation’s early views on some the questions in the paper, and seeking input from our members to guide our final sector response.

Download the discussion paper.

Throughout this discussion paper we have written  questions that we would like our members to answer in order to help inform our sector response. These questions do not replicate those set out in the Green Paper itself, but instead explore a number of important issues that we would like specific feedback on from our members. We have also prepared a short summary of these questions below to provide a quick overview of the feedback we’re seeking. However, we strongly recommend you read the full discussion paper if possible.

Please send your responses to the questions in this paper to greenpaper@housing.org.ukby Friday 26 October. 

We will also gather views from our members through a series of events taking place in October. You can now register for these online. 

Our Green Paper questions

Overview

1. What is your view on the principles we outline on page two of the discussion paper? Are there any other principles you suggest we take into account when developing our response?

2. What is your view on our suggested topline responses outlined on page three of the discussion paper?

Ensuring homes are safe and decent

3. What is your view on the specific proposals in the section ‘Ensuring homes are safe and decent’ on page five? Could they affect your ability to provide high quality, safe housing?

4. Do you support a review of the Decent Homes Standard and, if so, what factors should be taken into account?

5. Are there any particular factors you think should be considered that might have an impact on your ability to provide high quality, safe housing?

6. Are there any other measures you are considering, or have put in place, to ensure the homes you provide are safe and decent, that you think we should highlight in our response?

Effective resolution of complaints

7. What is your view on how the sector can best address the challenges in the Green Paper on speeding up the complaints procedure and making it easier for tenants to seek redress when things go wrong?

8. Do you agree it could be helpful to develop a mechanism, or at least a sector-wide approach, for dealing with complaints on defects in new build?

Empowering residents and strengthening the regulator

9. What is your view on how residents can be empowered, while still respecting the independence and diversity of the housing association sector?

10. Do you agree that good proportionate regulation could help strengthen our accountability to our tenants?

11. How do you think residents can be armed with information on landlord performance in a meaningful way that does not drive perverse incentives, and recognises local priorities and circumstances?

Tackling stigma and celebrating thriving communities

12. What is your view on the specific proposals in the section ‘Tackling stigma and celebrating thriving communities’ on page ten of the discussion paper, and what more do you think could be done to tackle stigma in social housing?

13. Do you have any examples of work you are doing to tackle stigma or create thriving communities that you think we should include in our response?

Expanding supply and supporting home ownership

14. Could you give us an indication of the additional supply you could deliver with longer-term certainty over grant funding (for example 10-year funding)?

15. Are you developing your own iterations of shared ownership schemes that we could showcase in our response? And what further support from Government would help with these?

16. What are your views on what more the Government could do to support community-led housing?

Other regulatory issues

17. Are there any issues with the current regulatory approach that you would like us to cover in our response? If so, what changes would you suggest and how would they help you operate more effectively, build more homes, or strengthen your relationship with tenants?