MR MURRAY WATT AND MS HILARY KYLE

27 APRIL 2004

  Q260 Mr Bailey: Just a very quick aside, if you can just give a very brief answer. Do you actually have any housing co-operatives in Northern Ireland?

  Mr Watt: Not in the sense that we have in GB. When I formerly worked in Dundee we were instrumental in establishing a number of them. I think we have a maintenance co-op in Strathfoyle.

  Ms Kyle: In the North West there is one maintenance co-op that has been in existence for a number of years. I think maybe experience would tell us that now it probably would not be able to pass at this stage because it is not providing a service in terms of money saving in that is has probably been more expensive to run than it should have been.

  Q261 Mr Bailey: I can see the problems of having a housing co-op in Northern Ireland. Can I just briefly move on. You have touched on this issue of anti-social behaviour. To what extent do you think the decline in the Housing Executive stock is compatible with its role in terms of community development, regeneration and dealing with anti-social behaviour?

  Mr Watt: I think there is a danger and concern has been expressed that as the Housing Executive continues to decline in size and scale that over time it might not have the number of staff, the level of staffing and the familiarity and intimacy with local communities that it currently has and that may inhibit its capacity to tackle the issues of anti-social behaviour, to support community relations to the degree that it currently would have the aspiration to do so. That would be something that Mr McIntyre alluded to this morning. It is a concern that we are hearing more often in Housing Community Network meetings.

  Q262 Mr Bailey: Is there any legislation on anti-social behaviour which you would find helpful in the context of the Northern Ireland situation?

  Mr Watt: On the policies and procedures that the Housing Executive has recently enacted in response to the Housing Order of last year, at the moment the training and information is being rolled out to Housing Community Networks. Certainly the Minister has offered for consultation a view on Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and Acceptable Behaviour Contracts and other such mechanisms which our organisation has responded positively to. It is difficult to see what other mechanisms might be in the offing. I know that anti-social behaviour is an issue that is probably being raised at every Housing Community Network meeting in every district and it is one that local communities are trying very hard to come to terms with. Whether or not the current mechanisms that we have in terms of the support and, indeed, the punitive measures are enough or are effective perhaps remains to be seen.

  Q263 Mark Tami: Firstly, looking at housing policy, do you think there is enough debate currently going on about the whole issue of the provision of social and affordable housing? If not, what do we need to perhaps stimulate a greater level of debate and involvement?

  Mr Watt: Probably there is not enough debate, primarily because of the circumstances and politics within Northern Ireland. What we try to do through NITAP is provide access to the wider issues, wider information and wider experience to promote best practice, to promote good practice through the Housing Community Network. In the past it would be fair to criticise people in Northern Ireland for being a little bit insular in their thinking and certainly we would encourage housing practitioners, community representatives and politicians to perhaps broaden the debate more fully. I think that the previous inquiry on the Social and Development Committee under devolution and this current inquiry have certainly thrown up interesting issues which I have no doubt people in local communities would have great interest in and perhaps the community housing network would be an ideal opportunity or an ideal mechanism for encouraging and stimulating that debate and discussion.

  Q264 Mark Tami: Looking at the private rented sector, do you believe it is making a contribution to the need for social housing or not?

  Mr Watt: It is our understanding that it probably is, that the increased role in the private rented sector, particularly in the urban areas in redevelopment, is providing housing and a good standard, quality of housing in locations where previously it had not.

  Q265 Mark Tami: So you think things are improving?

  Mr Watt: The information that we are receiving would be that is the case. Certainly in my own experience in inner city Belfast, the growth of private rented is something that has been noted by local communities and to a large extent it is recognised as a good thing and a positive thing as well. I think one of the pieces of information that we have received from other organisations undertaking research would be that households are increasingly turning to the private rented sector because they cannot access the public sector or are probably staying in the private rented sector for a lot longer than would have normally or previously been the case. Again, Mr McIntyre alluded to that in the previous session when he talked about the increase in Housing Benefit payment to the private rented sector. It is not necessarily in terms of the increase in private rented sector rents or in terms of the number of people who would qualify for Housing Benefit who are turning to the private rented sector for accommodation.

  Q266 Mark Tami: Bearing in mind that growth, is there any mechanism for the tenants to have a collective voice?

  Mr Watt: Over previous consultations, particularly on the houses of multiple occupation strategy that has been formulated, a number of organisations have been coming together on an informal basis, the Housing Executive itself, the NUSUSI, the academic institutions, and indeed ourselves. We have been looking at the means of supporting a resource for information to the various tenants groups within that sector, albeit initially our interest was the students and those within the academic areas. Certainly one of the outcomes of those discussions has been, if you like, an informal discussion mechanism which may or may not become more formalised in due course. Certainly those would be welcome discussions should they occur.

  Q267 Chairman: Now, earlier on Ms Kyle referred to a desire to work with housing associations, but said that unfortunately the resources were not there to enable that. If I ask the question would you like more resources, I am sure the answer would be yes but could you elaborate a little bit further in terms of saying how you believe a small amount of additional resource could help you to expand the amount of tenant participation in other sectors and perhaps also in terms of whether or not you have looked at alternative sources of bringing some of that money in to assist that work?

  Ms Kyle: If I can just answer your last query first. In terms of access and other resources, we have always taken the stance that to try and access other resources we are competing against the community groups that we are actually supporting and empowering, so that is a role we have never taken. In addition to that, I should say that probably if we accessed other fundings I suspect that next year the DSD or the Housing Executive may tell us that they are not going to give us as much as they had done previously, so certainly we have not done that. Our liaison officers, who are the field officers working out on the ground, would be the people who would be doing the hands-on work should we then move down the line of doing any housing association work. Certainly the models that we would use and encourage community participation through, whether it be compacts or whether it be local initiatives, we would see could be in some ways translated to the housing association sector. The pilot that we have undertaken would indicate that could be true but really it is a debate for the Federation whether they feel that is a role that they would want us to fulfil.

  Q268 Mr Luke: On your submission in the section " . . . continued decline in the supply of social housing . . . " you suggested that it is not necessarily the case that the mixed funding regime, which is the favoured regime of Government, has had its intended effect. Could you elaborate on that comment?

  Mr Watt: I think it is perhaps a question of language. I think the fact that the target or the projected completions per annum have not been met, whilst we are not putting the blame on mixed funding, I think that the transfer of the new build responsibility to housing associations has perhaps been difficult and problematic for associations. I think they have had to face a number of challenges and obstacles, of which mixed funding is one. I think we have alluded to the site and land availability and other issues there. One of the things which is pointed out frequently here, but certainly in these discussions one of the suspicions that community representatives might have, is that mixed funding is an excuse for reducing the amount that Central Government itself makes available to the new build programme. Now whether that is true or not I would not like to hazard a view. Certainly there is a feeling, or perhaps there is a feeling abroad, that the transfer process was too much too soon for a small number of associations to have to take on that full responsibility and perhaps the Housing Executive new build programme was halted prematurely.

  Q269 Mr Luke: You made the point also that it would be nice but it is unlikely that Government would step back in and fund wholly the provision of social housing. You do make the point that the Government should be more energetic in identifying some of the resources to fund things. What kind of developments do you think they should be looking at?

  Mr Watt: I think the illustration I made earlier about the example in Dublin. I think there should be an opportunity through PPS12, for example, if it is working to the extent that it does, that sites and land will be made available for affordable land for social housing. Beyond that, I think there is perhaps a need for there to be more joined-up thinking across Government departments and perhaps a closer tally of timescales and funding programmes across departments because we seem still to have a certain silo mentality or to be caught up in a certain silo trap with regard to that. Certainly it would be useful if there was demonstrably more togetherness in terms of the way Central Government itself thinks and sets targets.

  Q270 Mr Luke: Moving on to the quality of the housing stock, I had some questions with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive on that specific issue to do with the decent homes standard. In your submission you make clear that you are disappointed as well that obviously almost a third of the dwellings in Northern Ireland in that area do not reach these standards. You made the point, also, that you were glad to hear the response by the Housing Executive that they are now doing urgent non-essential repairs. The picture coming across is that you are unhappy with the way the repair service is going and it does have an effect on the achievement of the decent homes standard. Would you agree with that?

  Mr Watt: Yes. I think the decent homes standard itself, if it was to be applied to Northern Ireland, at least would be bringing Northern Ireland into line with England, Wales and Scotland, which may be a good thing. It would certainly raise the standards expected of housing in all sectors and that would be a good thing, also. It would result in improving housing conditions for households on low incomes, for lone and elderly people and other vulnerable groups. One of the principal ways of doing that would be through enhancing thermal comfort. If we were to achieve that it would do an awful lot to contribute towards tackling fuel poverty and social exclusion by improving the housing conditions and enhancing the health and social welfare of many people who are currently caught in a fuel poverty situation. I think that would be a good and desirable thing and would have been welcomed, certainly, when the Housing Executive said it would be their intention to tackle these particular issues by the target of 2010 within their own stock. I think with regard to the moratorium on the day-to-day repairs, one of the things which happened there was perhaps community reps perhaps felt that the Housing Executive had lost a bit of its credibility as an effective landlord as it was unable to meet its day-to-day repair obligations. I think there is a danger that there would be a knock-on effect that what has to be done now will not be done next year and there might be a subsequent failing in the system next year. Whether or not there are long-term consequences in terms of the condition of the stock I think would be very, very difficult to say.

  Q271 Mr Pound: Could I ask a very quick follow-up on that specific point. We heard earlier on, and I think you heard earlier, on from the Executive that the moratorium ceased on 1 April and the tap was then turned on. I have to say that I was surprised to then hear the information that all of the works had been undertaken, which shows a remarkable commissioning, an achievement process which is a stranger to me. From the tenant's perspective, has this happened? Is there still a backlog or have the moratorium blocked works all now been completed?

  Ms Kyle: Certainly I would not like to contradict the Chief Executive and what he said.

  Q272 Mr Pound: Go on!

  Ms Kyle: The director answered that question. Certainly I would probably agree that the works have been issued. Some of those works may be works that they have allowed a particular period of time for, like four weeks for completion. So if the job required a pre-inspection before the work was issued and they were allowed the four week period for completion then I would imagine that there may be some which are in the process of being completed but have not actually been completed. That is only the four week ones, obviously there are a number of others, change of tenants, etc, which would have been completed.

  Mr Watt: I think to be fair to an awful lot of the district offices as well, because they are currently going through the process of adopting Egan contracts for responsible maintenance as well, that the relationship between the Housing Executive and some of its contractors at the moment might be a little fraught. I think there are additional difficulties than simply the moratorium as to whether or not all of those repairs would be carried out by the end of this particular month.

  Q273 Mr Pound: Sorry, a naïve question, forgive me for this: does the Housing Executive have a direct works department or is all the work subcontracted?

  Mr Watt: All the work is subcontracted. There is a direct labour organisation and it has some of the contracts for some of the repairs and maintenance work.

  Ms Kyle: It has to bid for the work like other contractors where it does exist.

  Q274 Mr Luke: That was very useful to tease out. Going back to a question put to you about the issue of tenants being involved in allocations, there are different views from different parts of the country on how that works in different models, but one model which has been adopted since Murray's time in Dundee is that tenants are becoming much more involved in the delivery of the actual repair service and, indeed, monitor the work of the repair service and do site visits to make sure that things are working. Although you have taken a neutral role on the issue of allocations, do you not believe that there should be a bigger role for tenants in the actual performance of repair services?

  Ms Kyle: Certainly. Maybe I misled the Committee when I spoke about the involvement of community groups and what they wanted to get involved in at a local level. There would be some that would be involved in the sorts of things you have just mentioned in terms of going out and monitoring when work has been completed, what the tenant satisfaction is, and that is supplementing the evidence that the district office has. There are also a number of schemes where the community groups have undertaken the post-scheme completion service whenever a programme scheme has actually been completed. There are a number of groups who undertake to go out. Part of the pilot service delivery project is also about where there are vulnerable people who require emergency services, perhaps they have got a burst pipe or perhaps their electrics have blown or whatever, it would be a local rep who would go along and turn off the stopcock or whatever until the plumber comes out. Yes, they would be interested in being more involved in these sorts of things.

  Mr Watt: I mentioned the Egan contract processes as well. I think it has been a huge forward step that community representations through the Housing Community Network have been involved in interviewing and assessing the contractors who are coming into that and will be involved in the monitoring of those Egan contracts. Just to emphasise that, yes, the role for the community representatives is ever increasing and entering into areas which previously they were not.

  Ms Kyle: I suppose I should also have said that in terms of programme schemes that are on site in terms of the Housing Executive's consultation standards, it allows for community representatives to sit on the project team right from the word go right through delivery when they would go to pre-site meetings and meet with the contractor on site and that has proved very beneficial as well.

  Mr Luke: I just want to make a comment on allocations. I know that many tenants will not want to get involved in allocating houses but many of them will want to get involved in seeing that people who have got previous anti-social behaviour records are not allocated houses.

  Q275 Mr Pound: The main thrust of my questions that I gave you notice of before the meeting, Chairman, have already been addressed. If I can just ask you a question that was asked earlier on to get the unique perspective that you bring both individually and on behalf of the tenants. Do you get any feedback from tenants that there is a frustration in the social housing development field because of the current planning process?

  Mr Watt: I think there is general frustration and perhaps a lack of understanding of planning processes. The community organisations who have been involved in planning processes are usually because of a response to a particular application and they have found the process to be not as accessible as their experience with other Government departments would be. In fairness to the Department and the modernising of the planning processes themselves, and certainly the roll-out of the area plan that has been undertaken over the last number of years, there has been an increased emphasis on bringing community representation and community views to feed into those processes. There is increased access but with regards to the particular issue of social housing I think that groups would probably feel it is a bit of a frustration rather than something that they enjoy.

  Q276 Mr Pound: Is tenant involvement a positive factor here because frequently, in my experience, where tenants have been involved in precisely these sorts of areas their reaction has been more negative than positive and has tended to be oppositional rather than constructive and they tend to get more exercised in their task of preventing a development than actually facilitating a development. I appreciate that you do not have the same proximity pressures here that we have in my part of the world in West London certainly, but is there a positive role for tenants in planning along the lines you have talked about, particularly at the embryonic stage?

  Mr Watt: There probably ought to be.

  Q277 Mr Pound: Why is that?

  Mr Watt: I think one of the genuine difficulties, if you like, is that because the Housing Executive is relatively easy and open to tenant participation and the people's experience in dealing with them as a public body there is an expectation perhaps when they deal with other public bodies that it might be facilitated in the same way. I think when it is not, because obviously the planning service is not structured along those lines, then I think frustration sets in and there does tend to be a more confrontational attitude or response to planning rather than actively seeking to participate. I think as well—it is probably well documented elsewhere—other community organisations would feel that the planning system is perhaps weighted in favour of developments which are not in the best interests of local communities.

  Q278 Chairman: You have been very generous in your answers to us and in the written submission. Are there any issues that you expected us to raise or would wish to add, comments you would wish to add to the questioning that you have had?

  Ms Kyle: I do not think so. Certainly if you want any further information in terms of written information on the Housing Community Network we can furnish you with reports.

  Q279 Mr Pound: You should not encourage him!

  Ms Kyle: I forgot that point you made earlier.

  Q280 Chairman: What we are finding is in this inquiry we have taken a lot of evidence from professional bodies and sometimes it is difficult to give the tenant's voice enough volume. Any information that we receive which is on behalf of tenants or comes from tenants is extraordinarily useful to us. We do appreciate you taking the time this morning. Thank you for the evidence you have given. Hopefully we will be publishing the report possibly towards the end of June. We shall make sure the comments you have made are included and they are useful to us. Thank you.

  Mr Watt: Can I just thank the Committee for taking the time to hear us and meeting with us this morning.

  Chairman: Thank you.