A report set out a series of recommendations to the government designed to ensure the success of the 'Green Deal'.
Source: Key Policies for Accelerating Low Carbon Retrofit in the Existing Domestic Building Stock, Existing Homes Alliance
Links: Report | Summary | CIH press release
Notes: The 'Green Deal' is a programme designed to improve the energy efficiency of buildings. Under the scheme, householders would be able to get energy efficiency improvements carried out with capital provided by businesses, who would get their money back through energy bills.
Date: 2010-Dec
The government announced that it was scrapping a new set of house-building standards that would have applied to homes built with government funding or on public land, saying that it was 'lifting burdens from the backs of builders'.
Source: Press release 25 November 2010, Department for Communities and Local Government
Links: DCLG press release | NHF press release | RIBA press release | Inside Housing report
Date: 2010-Nov
A report examined the attitudes of local authorities to the future of arm's-length management organizations (ALMOs), originally designed to improve the standard of council housing. It was generally acknowledged that the ALMO model had succeeded in its objectives: but although some authorities planned to retain their ALMOs, others were considering bringing them 'in-house'.
Source: Steve Douglas and Lanek Banga, Whose Stock Is It Anyway? Local authority perspectives on the future of ALMOs, HouseMark
Links: Report | Inside Housing report
Date: 2010-Nov
A report (by an official advisory body) said that there should be a new, simpler standards framework for housing, in return for a set of minimum national design standards for all new homes.
Source: Simpler and Better: Housing design in everyone's interest, Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment
Links: Report
Date: 2010-Jun
A report (by an official advisory body) said that the existing regime of building regulations, planning policy and funding had created a framework for housing quality that was 'confused, overlapping and sometimes contradictory'. It said that this plethora of standards should be replaced by a much simpler national standards framework. This would include minimum design standards for both houses and housing, and should address the policy principles required to meet environmental commitments and the basic needs of communities and residents.
Source: Improving the Design of New Housing: What role for standards?, Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment
Links: Report
Date: 2010-Jun
A study examined the impact of low-quality housing. It found strong links between poor housing and low educational attainment; and an 'association' with crime and reoffending. Poor housing cost the National Health Service £2.5 billion per year in treating people suffering from a wide range of illnesses linked directly to living in cold, damp, and often dangerous homes.
Source: Danny Friedman, Social Impact of Poor Housing, National Housing Federation
Links: Report | NHF press release
Date: 2010-Apr
A report by a committee of MPs welcomed the 'substantial progress' made towards the target of all social housing being of a decent standard by December 2010. However, despite this progress, the target would not be met. The government needed to do more to ensure that landlords could complete the outstanding work and that properties were not allowed to fall back into disrepair.
Source: The Decent Homes Programme, Twenty-first Report (Session 2009-10), HC 350, House of Commons Public Accounts Select Committee/TSO
Links: Report | Inside Housing report
Date: 2010-Mar
The Scottish Government began consultation on proposals designed to improve the standard of private rented housing.
Source: Consultation Paper on a Proposed Housing Bill: The private rented sector, licensing of mobile home sites and the twenty year rules, Scottish Government
Links: Consultation document | Scottish Government press release | Inside Housing report
Date: 2010-Mar
A report by a committee of MPs said that the 'Decent Homes' programme had had a 'dramatic positive effect' on the living conditions of most social housing tenants: but the government had failed to invest enough resources in the parallel programme to improve homes occupied by vulnerable people in the private sector.
Source: Beyond Decent Homes, Fourth Report (Session 2009-10), HC 60, House of Commons Communities and Local Government Select Committee/TSO
Links: Report | Care & Repair England press release | New Start report | Inside Housing report
Date: 2010-Mar
An audit report said that over a million social homes had been improved under the government's Decent Homes programme. Funding had also been provided to improve conditions for vulnerable households in private sector accommodation. But there were weaknesses in the information collected by the government, which had reduced its assurance that value for money was being achieved.
Source: The Decent Homes Programme, HC 212 (Session 2009-10), National Audit Office/TSO
Links: Report | Summary | NAO press release | Guardian report | BBC report | Local Government Chronicle report
Date: 2010-Jan
