‘Going Local’ is part of a plan to shake-up public sector housing management.  Will it mean the end of council housing as we know it? 

 Council housing has fallen from grace. What began as an optimistic  programme to modernise housing in the UK and clear the cities of slums, has become a major headache for local councils. While resources dwindle and the housing stock ages, the social, economic and political climate has become far more hostile than in the glory days of ‘homes fit for heroes’ and the post-war building boom.

A combination of social, political and economic change, years of dubious architectural and social planning and a massive fall in investment has plunged many estates into a tailspin of decline. In Leeds, England’s second biggest council house provider, boarded-up and derelict houses are commonplace on many estates. The City Council estimates that an additional £1billion would be needed to bring the city’s 70,000 homes up to a decent standard, an average of about £14,000 per home.

The Government’s vision

In April 2000, the Government published a Green Paper calling for major changes to the management of council housing. In order to access the huge investment required to repair and maintain the country’s 3 million council houses, the direct role of local authorities as landlords would have to be replaced. The Government proposed smaller local housing organisations boasting a high degree of tenant involvement as the new model. Each new organisation would manage no more than 12,000 homes but would have much more freedom to innovate and lever in investment from a variety of sources than local authorities currently enjoy.

There are several variations to this theme in the Green Paper, giving tenants some choice in how their housing will be managed in the future.

The main option is Large Scale Voluntary Transfer (LSVT) which involves the transfer of housing to a new local organisation after a ballot of tenants. Once the transfer has taken place, the houses are no longer ‘council houses’, but remain ‘social’ housing. This option has already been adopted by many local authorities across the country.

Leeds City Council’s vision

Leeds City Council faces the inevitable break-up of its housing stock as its 70,000 homes are well in excess of the 12,000 limit. But while the Government might prefer to see local authorities renounce their landlord function altogether and focus instead on strategic issues, Leeds City Council want to retain some degree of control in the management of the city’s council housing stock.

The option the Council appear to prefer is called the ‘Arms Length Organisation’ (ALO). Under this scheme, the housing is managed by smaller local organisations which are majority owned by the City Council.

A model being explored by Leeds City Council involves establishing six ALOs whose areas would largely coincide with the new health care boundaries in Leeds (there would be two ALOs in the eastern area).

The tenant’s vision

The final picture will not be clear until the tenants have been consulted and balloted. This process, dubbed ‘Going Local,’ is currently underway in Leeds and is expected to take some time.

More information can be found at the Council’s website: http://www.leeds.gov.uk/lcc/housing/goinglocal/index.html