Councils in seven areas with high numbers of poor privately rented homes are to receive cash to test new ways of ‘cracking down on rogue landlords and test new approaches to driving up standards’.
Announcement of the awards came alongside the Government’s response to publication of the coroner’s report into the death of two year old Awaab Ishak caused as a direct result of mould in his rented family home.
The case, said the coroner, exposed ‘a litany of failure’ at social housing landlord Rochdale Boroughwide Housing. But failing landlords providing poor quality and unsafe housing was an issue in both social and private rented sector, said Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Michael Gove.
This, he said, was why the Government had awarded a share of £14m for projects that included: £2.3m for Greater Manchester, including Rochdale and surrounding councils, to increase the use of fines where landlords are found to have committed offences; £678,000 for Leeds to use behavioural science to change culture among landlords, improving knowledge and skills; and £1.14m for Cornwall to create a database of private rented accommodation to target better enforcement action.
The announcement follows close on the heels of that of money allocated to beef-up inspection and enforcement within the sector providing supported housing for vulnerable tenants.
Worried that ‘rogue landlords’ might be exploiting the supported housing system, the Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities announced that £20m had been allocated to councils to better police the system.
Successful pilots had already been funded in Birmingham, Blackburn, Darwen, Blackpool and Hull to the tune of £11m.
So far as Rochdale Boroughwide Housing is concerned, it will not now receive its expected £1m funding from the Affordable Homes Programme or receive any new AHP contracts for new homes until the Regulator of Social Housing has concluded an investigation into the social housing landlord.
As part of a wider crackdown on poor standards, the Housing Secretary will also block from new AHP funding any housing provider that breaches the Regulator’s consumer standards. The department will also consider stripping failing providers of existing AHP funding.
Meanwhile Michael Gove has written to all councils and housing associations saying they must raise the bar on standards and take urgent action where people complain about damp and mould.
‘RBH failed its tenants so it will not receive a penny of additional taxpayers’ money for new housing until it gets it’s act together and does right by tenants.
Let this be a warning to other housing providers who are ignoring complaints and failing in their obligations to tenants’.
Gove said he was ‘more determined than ever to deliver our drastic reforms to the housing sector, protecting the rights of tenants and ensuring social landlords do not put people’s lives and livelihoods at risk’.
