3 May 2023
Better social housing begins with excellent data
Helen Baker
Chair of Shelter and of the Better Social Housing Review
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Helen Baker, Chair of Shelter and of the Better Social Housing Review panel, was our keynote speaker at the 2023 NFA Annual Conference and told delegates the review panel were keenly aware that social housing is a system under immense pressure. The issues landlords face are very real; and she argued that better quality – and truly comparable – data will be a crucial first step in persuading government to help them to deliver on their core purpose.
Our social housing landlords are striving to find the balance between responding to the needs of current tenants in current stock and finding ways to increase their stock of social housing. We all know the country’s need for new social housing is absolutely desperate.
When the Better Social Housing Review panel were asked to take a cool, independent look at these challenges, they also understood that the sector faces a host of additional and sometimes contradictory demands including being expected to deliver safety, climate change response and cost of living support, all while managing the oldest housing stock in Europe; and despite, at government level, a lack of strategic thinking and action, inconsistent and inadequate investment and even, in recent times, four years of government-imposed rent cuts.
As a panel we spoke to a very wide range of individuals and organisations interested in social housing, but we chose to put tenants’ experience and voice at the centre of our findings.
Three clear threads ran through what they told us matters most. They cared about the state of their home and how maintenance and repairs were managed by their housing provider. Secondly, they cared very much about how they were treated when they tried to get help, about the organisational culture and the attitudes they encountered.
And finally, concerns were repeatedly raised with us that some groups still face significant discrimination and disadvantage within the system, in particular those from black and minority ethnic communities, those with disabilities and single parent families led by women.
No consistent attempt has ever been made to gather sector-wide comparable data about the state of the nation’s social housing, whether managed by housing association, ALMO or local authority.
There were positives; residents told us how much they valued face-to-face contacts and especially the role of frontline housing officers, but they also told us they felt that those officers should be better supported and valued by their organisations.
Many residents described how asking for help could feel more like a game of snakes and ladders than a straightforward customer service process. Messages didn’t get passed along; every inquiry was answered by a different person with a different view of how a problem should be tackled; complaints were too often ‘lost’ in the system.
A key concern of the panel was that there is no shared data system across the social housing system for anyone – the panel, policymakers, landlords themselves – to draw on. It seemed that no consistent attempt had been made to build a comprehensive, consistently measured picture of the state of social housing nationally, whether managed by housing association, council or ALMO.
The HACT Housing Data Standards were the closest thing social housing had to a shared framework, but far from every landlord was using it. The panel was, in fact, told that the sector was wasting considerable time and money collating poor quality data which was leading to poor decision-making and could not be used to inform constructive cross-sector comparisons and learning.
This is why our second key recommendation was simply this: that social housing providers should conduct and publish a thorough audit of all social housing in England.
If the sector is to manage all the demands being placed upon it, we must persuade government that this can no longer be resourced only by getting the sector to sweat its own assets.
Audits – producing sound, detailed knowledge about every property and the experience of all tenants, rather than just a sampling process – are expensive. However, the point is that the sector cannot afford not to invest in this because without a comprehensive, comparable whole-sector database, it will be impossible to take powerful and clearly evidenced arguments to government about urgently needed changes to investment, policy and legislation.
Obviously, when the Secretary of State says he wants this level of data on his desk within three months, we know that can’t possibly be done. There does, however, need to be a deadline and there absolutely must be common standards across the sector. If the sector is to manage all the demands being placed upon it, we must persuade government that this can no longer be resourced only by getting the sector to sweat its own assets.
Social housing must again be recognised as a fundamental part of our national infrastructure, as critical as health and education, and something to be truly proud of.