Revolving door for housing ministers

Did you know that the new housing minister is the ninth since labour came to power in 1997? They are:

1997 – Hilary Armstrong
1999 – Nick Raynsford
2001 – Lorde Falconer
2002 – Lord Rooker
2003 – Keith Hill
2005 – Yvette Cooper
2006 – Ruth Kelly
2007 – Hazel Blears
2008 – Caroline Flint
2008 - Margaret Beckett
2009 – John Healey

How can the department hope to have a consistent policy with so many different ministers? Roof Magazine (the source of this information) is generally approving of Mr Healey’s appointment. However with a general election looming on the horizon, he is obviously not going to have that long in post.

From the press one rather gets the impression that ministerial posts are mere tokens of Prime Ministerial approval or disapproval (depending on the post). However they are also government departments that affect all our lives. It would be nice if after the election, the next housing minister (assuming he or she is effective) could stay with us a bit longer.

Homeless hostel too comfortable says VAT man

Reading the recent issue of Roof Magazine, I came across this utterly bonkers decision by the VAT authorities.

Byker Housing Association has built a new 31 bed hostel for the homeless in Newcastle – however the VAT authorities have deemed it to be a commercial building (i.e. a hotel) rather than a residential one - because it is too comfortable! This means that it becomes liable for VAT of £315,000 – which will put Byker Bridge out of business.

Under the VAT rules, hostels should be exempt from VAT if they are for a residential use, designed as a dwelling, or used for a relevant charitable purpose. Despite this, because the VAT office does not have a workable definition of a homeless persons hostel, and because the new hostel is quite nice, they are treating it as if it were a hotel for tax purposes. Even though the building was partly developed with Housing Corporation finance which is only available for non commercial ventures!

Hopefully this decision will be set aside. Otherwise Byker Bridge will go out of business, there will be 1,500 per year more homeless on the streets of Newcastle, and it will have a knock on effect on other registered social landlords developing homeless hostels

Justice, what justice?

I was very concerned to read in the Law Society Gazette today that if the proposed reforms to legal aid go ahead, it will lead to the 'immediate dismantlement' of specialist civil liberty legal teams in some firms. This is because cases dealt with by specialist providers tend to be more complex and time-consuming and are likely to be unprofitable under the reformed 'fixed fee' system. Government cannot expect solicitors to maintain a service if it is going to be run at a loss or at no profit.

Michael Schwarz, partner and Bindman & Partners said "Clients will not have access to specialist lawyers and their human rights will be at risk. It will be an encouragement for negligence or abuse by state officials, and is a recipe for injustice."

A LSC spokesman trotted out the usual statement saying that the numbers of people helped has increased. But we all know that statistics can be very misleading. Maybe more people wanting to know what to do about their grazed knees after tripping on a paving stone in the High Street have been advised via a telephone helpline, but what about those with serious human rights problems who need more specialised help? Does giving basic legal telephone help to ten people really equate to a better service than helping one person with a serious but expensive human rights problem? It is certainly cheaper, so maybe in government-speak it is.

It is ironic that the government which introduced the Human Rights Act is now going to be responsible for taking away the ability of people to use it.

Unbelievable arrogance

I have just had the dubious pleasure of watching Vera Baird QC, our legal aid minister, being questioned on Channel 4 lunchtime news about the legal aid reforms. When asked how vulnerable clients were going to manage if they have to travel up to 50 miles to get essential legal advice, she just shook her head in a patronizing manner and said that that this was simply not going to happen.

Actually, she told us, it is going to be better for everyone after the reforms come in, because (she implied) solicitors will be forced to manage their practices properly which will mean more money and work for all. In fact, those silly old solicitors are just making a fuss about nothing and will soon be grateful to the government for making them carry out these essential changes which will make their working lives so much better.

How stupid is she? Does she not know that all legal aid practices have had years of efficiency measures being imposed on them, auditing, five year plans, cost cutting exercises and the like. Does she really think that she, a government minister and barrister, knows better than the partners how to run a legal aid firm? And does she really think that solicitors are going to carry on doing legal aid work if these reforms come in, when there is other much more profitable work to be done? It is not solicitors, remember, who are going to suffer for all this, it is the clients.

So far as I can see there are two possible reasons for the governments attitude. One is that they want to kill the legal profession dead because an active legal profession is an embarrassment to them as they keep pointing out problems in their legislative program etc. The other is that they don’t have the cash and the Health Service is a more popular destination for any cash that they do have. I really hope it is the second, but sometimes I get paranoid and wonder if it is the first.

But if I had not given up legal aid work a long time ago, I would be very much tempted to give it up now and to write to Ms Baird and tell her that it was her smug patronizing attitude which had been the last straw.

If you feel as annoyed about all this as I do, support the Law Societies "What price Justice?" campagn.

Another missed opportunity

While doing research recently for my book, I was distressed to see that the Department of Communities and Local Government's Decent Homes Standard, which all social housing is supposed to meet by the end of 2010, does not not include a measure of energy efficiency.

I am constantly disappointed by this governments poor record on environmental matters. It seems that despite lip service to environmental concerns, in things which could make a real difference, they just forget about it. If all social housing landlords were forced to consider energy efficiency when looking at improvement works, this could have a tremendous beneficial effect. As it is, the cash strapped social landlords are not (save for the enlightened few) going to consider improvements they are not required to make.

Yet another missed opportunity.

One lawyer for the rich …

Following on from my post yesterday, it occurs to me that if the current trend continues, there will eventually be no legal aid solicitors left in private practice. Those unable to afford private legal fees will then have no alternative but to use the Law Centres and legal charities such as the Citizens Advice Bureau and Shelter. In many parts of the country, the ‘legal aid deserts’, this is already a reality,

Although I have the greatest admiration for Law Centres and the legal charities, the fact is that there will be different lawyers acting for the rich and for the poor. Inevitably the solicitors and caseworkers working for the law centres and legal charities will be paid less than those in private practice, and this will mean that most of the highflyers will be snapped up by the city firms and other large private practices.

With all its faults, under the old system, at least those eligible for legal aid could chose almost any solicitors firm, and the same solicitor could have a private fee paying and a legal aid caseload (and many did). Now a two tier system is developing. Although the solicitors in the ‘social’ sector may be (and probably will be) very good, I am unhappy about the idea of there being a divide in this way.

It is another symptom of the widening rift between those who can afford to pay for private services (schooling, health care, etc) and those who cannot. It is a very worrying trend.

It is ironic that this has come to pass under a labour government.

Respect

I can't help feeling that the use of the word 'respect' by the government is going a little too far.

For example I learn from the most recent issue of LAG magazine that there is not only a 'Respect committee' on the cabinet, but also a 'Respect Team', and a 'Respect Squad' (ten senior practitioners who can be 'called in' to help local agencies tackle anti social behaviour). When I first read this I did wonder if LAG were having us on, but sadly it appears not.

By the way, the respect boys are getting tough - plans have been announced to cut housing benefit for households evicted for anti social behviour who refuse to engage in rehabilitation. Pwhah!

That happened in June. On 17 August The Respect Standard for Housing Management was launched, announced here, and landlords can sign up to it here. I wonder how many have.

There is even a 'Respect' website. I suppose it is an attempt to make contact with the disaffected, which ought to be a good thing, but somehow everything this government does is tainted by spin, and nobody really believes anything any more.

But I still love the song by Aretha Franklin. Listen to Aretha here, performed by Pomme and Kelly. Respect!

A rant against government stupidity

It has now been officially confirmed that the introduction of the tenancy deposit scheme has been put back to April 2007. One of the reasons apparently is that during consultation the landlords organizations complained that the way the scheme was set up, if the tenant did a runner leaving rent arrears, the scheme would not release the deposit to the landlord who would have to go to court to get a CCJ first!

I sometimes wonder what the people in charge of things nowadays use for brains. Surely it must have been obvious that this is unfair? Why was it necessary for the landlords organisations to have to point this out?

Another backtrack that has taken place recently is the decision to remove the home condition reports from HIPS (or at least not make them mandatory). Conveyancing is not my subject but colleagues who specialize in this work have been saying for months that the system is misconceived, was designed to solve a problem that did not really exist, and that it would probably prove to be unworkable. Now the government are looking silly. Why don’t they listen to advice?

Another own goal is their attempt to destroy the legal profession by threatening their independence, which as reported in The Times today is the subject of severe criticism by a parliamentary committee. Indeed the new President of the Law Society has said that the new wide and "unnecessary" powers taken by the Lord Chancellor will allow him to intervene in law firms - or even dictate that "every solicitor should have a blue-screen saver", if he wanted. Already foreign bars, for example Germany, have warned that if other proposed ‘reforms’ to allow firms to be owned by businesses go ahead they will not be willing to deal with them. The legal profession, particularly in the city, brings in huge sums to this country and is widely respected – why should the government wish to threaten this? What good will it do? Apart from removing the possibility that a vigorous legal profession might undermine half baked government initiatives, that is.

One reason for all of the above may be the desire to appease the consumers organisations (who support all these initiatives) at all costs, and accepting what they say without question. I have no quarrel with ensuring a fair deal for consumers, but the consumer organisations do appear to be unnecessarily skewed against landlords and the legal profession. But it will be dangerous to undermine either as this country needs landlords (to house those who cannot afford to buy) and an independent legal profession.

An uneven playing field for landlords

The new HMO licensing regulations are now effective and the three month 'grace period' has now ended. Landlords who have failed to obtain a license face fines of up to £20,000, plus risk tenants applying for rent repayment orders while being unable to evict them via the section 21 procedure. But have the government played fair with landlords?

In a recent press release the British Property Federation accused government of deliberately making the regime more complex by allowing local discretion as opposed to following a standardised approach across the country.

For example there is a huge variation in license fees, which run from under £100 to over £1,000 per property (for example see the HMO license fee list I am developing). This variation is massively unfair on the landlords in the expensive boroughs, particularly those with a large portfolio, who will see their colleagues with similar properties paying a fraction of the fees they are having to pay. Tenants will suffer also as rents will no doubt rise to cover this additional expense. It appears that the governing legislation (the Housing Act 2004) allows capping but for reasons best known to themselves government preferred to allow the current uneven playing field.

The BPA also criticise the government for its delay in its preparations which meant that local authorities were not up to speed in April when the regulations first came in.

All change at the ODPM

I wish government departments would make up their mind what they want to call themselves. Until Mr Prescott’s shenanigans with his secretary, the department with responsibility for housing was the department of the Office Deputy Prime Minister – odpm for short. And the web-site where we found all the stuff was www.odpm.gov.uk.

However now its Ruth Kelly, so the department (or the bit of it that she is in charge of) has changed its name to the Department for Communities and Local Government, and the web-site changed to www.dclg.gov.uk. So, all references to this on my web-site had to be changed so people following them were not at risk of getting the dreaded ‘page not found’ page. Which took a while, because I have a lot of links (many of them only put in quite recently, when I updated the HMO section). However, now I look at the site and see that they have another new website url, www.communities.gov.uk.

Why can’t they just stick to the one name and the one web-address? Its such a lot of bother for us all keeping up with it. And I dread to think how many man hours have been and will be wasted at the dear old DCLG itself, dealing with these changes, and how much stationary will be redundant because it has the wrong name on it. Such a lot of waste and bother. So unnecessary. So annoying. So typical of government.

HHSRS guidance published late

I read in the excellent Legal Action magazine that the government is late in publishing guidance to Local Authorities on the new Housing Health and Safety Rating System ("HHSRS"), which comes into force on 6 April. The Governments own published program provided for it to be distributed in January. Legal Action say it is not published but looking on the ODPM web-site, I see that guidance went online on 27 and 28 February, presumably after Legal Action went to press.

Still, not really good enough is it? The Local Authority officers have to go live with this stuff on 6 April, which is not long off. I wish them the best of luck!