George Walker – Blog – Urban Landlord Group meeting – 19 November 2024
We held the fifth meeting of the urban landlord group on 19 November 2024. This is one of the three standing groups of senior people from Registered Social Landlords we meet with regularly to discuss important and topical issues in social housing in Scotland. We meet with the groups to help us understand the challenges faced by those we regulate.
The main topic of the group’s discussion was the declaration of a national housing emergency and the response to that declaration by the Scottish Government and social landlords. All members of the group recognised the increasingly difficult situation around homelessness and temporary accommodation, but were wary of a response that was searching for simple solutions to complex problems. As an example, a number of the group members highlighted the current attention on empty homes as potentially diverting focus from more critical issues; most of the group members were clear that they had few if any longer-term empty homes and had relatively quick relet times for those homes that do become empty.
The group members highlighted the local impact of increases in the number of asylum seekers granted leave to remain but who could not secure housing and of the removal of local connection requirements for people applying as homeless. All of the member had increased the proportion of lets that they are making to people who are homeless, but did note a growing frustration from tenants who are looking to transfer and from people on housing lists who are having to wait longer to have their needs met.
Some members had an appetite to consider tenant incentive schemes to encourage tenants to downsize thereby releasing much needed larger homes for families, and urged the Scottish Government to consider funding such an initiative.
The group recognised the need for urgency in the response to the housing emergency, particular short term measures to mitigate the impact of the most acute issues, but there was a real appetite from the group members for a more fundamental review of the drivers of the current problems and the development of a policy response that focused on the whole housing system.
While members of the group were hoping for an uplift in the capital funding for the Affordable Housing Supply Programme in the forthcoming Scottish Budget, some raised concerns that there may not be the capacity in the system to significantly increase the rate of building new homes. These constraints on capacity relate to the availability of suitable construction contractors and suitably skilled labour, and from the cost of materials and for the cost of new requirements such as sprinkler systems. Others flagged that the financial capacity of RSLs may also be a constraint with interest rates still relatively high and new costs to RSLs, including from the UK Budget’s increases to employers’ National Insurance Contributions.
The group then touched on the proposed indicators on damp and mould in our consultation on the Annual Return on the Charter. Everyone recognised that this is a complex issue and was as much about poverty as it is about housing; landlords are very aware that some tenants feel they cannot afford to adequately heat their homes or use mechanical ventilation because of the cost. The group felt that it would be important to have an early review of the effectiveness of the indicators that are introduced.