Affordable Hyperoptic broadband to digitally future proof homes
Hyperoptic broadband partners with Poplar HARCA Housing Association to digitally future proof homes
January 29, 2021
Housing Association Poplar HARCA and full fibre broadband provider Hyperoptic are pleased to announce broadband roll out to 8,000 homes with the most vulnerable and digitally excluded residents being offered the service free for 12 months.
Poplar HARCA is extending broadband choice to residents as it works to increase digital accessibility for the community as part of its digital inclusion strategy.
Hyperoptic is glad to digitally future proof Poplar HARCA’s properties for decades to come. It supports Poplar HARCA’s aim to reduce the digital divide and increase opportunities for residents to access essential services, social activities and most importantly, education, training and work.
Roll out will begin immediately and offers residents faster, reliable service and the best Internet experience possible, whether they are using it for home working, virtual learning or streaming entertainment.
Liam McAvoy, Senior Director of Business Development, Hyperoptic: “Poplar HARCA is a progressive housing provider with a clear vision to discover, develop and implement opportunities to help its community thrive. We are thrilled to support this objective with a future-proofed broadband service, which enables a host of societal and economic benefits.
“We believe that everyone deserves to enjoy the benefits afforded by access to full fibre connectivity, which is why connecting social housing homes is one of Hyperoptic’s strategic priorities. Partnerships like these are fundamental to keep us on track to Gigabit London.”
Babu Bhattacherjee, Director of Communities and Neighbourhoods, Poplar HARCA: “Covid-19 has shone a spotlight on the harmful effects of digital exclusion on low-income communities. The Internet has become a central part of our lives. It is necessary for keeping informed and accessing opportunities. Partnerships such as these are essential to sustaining thriving families and communities. We’re also seeing how having a fast and reliable Internet connection positively impacts mental wellbeing. Digital inclusion is a priority now more than ever.”
Hyperoptic is currently working with Poplar HARCA to identify eligible families who may benefit from our free broadband offer (50Mbps.) We want to help those who do not have a reliable broadband connection but need connectivity so that their children can easily access virtual education resources and learn from home.
This is what we have proposed for India House. More news soon.
Lucy Powell MP to be the shadow housing secretary
Manchester Central MP Lucy Powell appointed new shadow housing minister in post-election reshuffle
MP for Manchester Central, Lucy Powell, has been selected as Labour’s new shadow housing secretary.
The former shadow business and consumer affairs minister was appointed on Sunday (09.05.21) and will replace Thangam Debbonaire.
Ms Powell said on Twitter: “Really pleased to become shadow housing secretary – some really big issues to tackle from cladding, housing crisis, private rented sector, homelessness and providing decent housing for all, to name a few.”
Lucy was first elected in 2012 and is a great supporter of India House.
She has been a vocal campaigner on the national building safety crisis, raising the issue several times in parliament in recent months.
High-Speed Fibre Community Broadband
Now more than ever, we all need reliable high-speed broadband, so we have reopened dialogue with The Guinness Partnership to discuss a community high-speed fibre broadband partnership. This means India House could connect to the national fibre network, bringing many benefits, including value for money, reliability and sustainability. And you can choose the internet service provider of your choice.
To plan the best route for all of the cables with minimum disruption it makes sense to install fibre broadband at the same time as the CCTV and door entry systems is upgraded .
This community partnership could be funded via our service charge account and would mean EVERYONE will have access to value for money, high-speed broadband.
Various companies are offering fast fibre broadband to city-centre buildings. Hyperoptic was installing cables on Whitworth St last week, so we contacted them. This was their response:
“Unfortunately, our service is still not available here. Of course, please feel free to register your interest. Overall it is a process that takes from 8-12 months.”
BT is offering a community fibre-partnership, we contacted them (ref 58786), and were sent some generic information. We have passed this information on to Guinness Partnership and will continue to investigate other options.
In Memory of Kate Woods
It is with heavy hearts that we write to inform you that our very dear friend, beloved neighbour and India House community champion Kate Woods has passed away. Kate will be sadly missed by those who knew and loved her. She truly was one of a kind, and for many of us, India House will never feel the same again.
Kate was a trailblazer; one of the original tenants of India House when it opened in 1989. She was also a founding member of the India House Residents’ Association / Scrutiny Panel. She campaigned tirelessly on behalf of us all, and we have to thank her for forensically scrutinising our service charge accounts each year.
One of the improvements that Kate fought for was to have handrails fitted to our entranceway steps. In recognition of Kate’s huge contribution to the community of India House, we would like to have a handrail engraved in her memory. The Guinness Partnership has agreed to this proposal as a way of honouring and remembering such an important member of our community. We think it is a fitting tribute to a wonderful woman who truly loved living in India House.
Sincerely,
Liam and David.
News from Guinness Partnership
Whilst the government has started talking about 1m+, they have confirmed that people should maintain a distance of 2m where they can, and therefore please continue to stay 2 metres apart from others wherever possible – this includes members of Guinness staff and their contractors.
Guinness services
As of mid-June, Guinness Partnership has been offering most services, although some continue to be delivered in a slightly different way and a very few services will remain suspended for a little longer:
All repairs and essential safety visits are being undertaken.
Guinness Partnership is letting homes and supporting transfers and mutual exchanges for general needs customers.
Visitors, neighbours and community
Visitors from one household at a time are permitted into people’s homes from 4 July following Government guidelines. Please ask any visitors to respect social distancing rules when visiting you.
Communal outdoor spaces are primarily for the use of residents. Please continue to observe social distancing in outdoor communal areas and please continue to be considerate to your neighbours by keeping noise to a minimum and ensuring all areas are left clean and tidy.
Please continue to follow Government guidelines on helping prevent the spread of coronavirus by washing your hands regularly (for at least 20 seconds) or using hand sanitiser where this is not possible. This is particularly important whenever you leave or enter your home.
You should also consider whether you want to or need to wear a face-covering. These are now required when using public transport and recommended in enclosed spaces outside your home to prevent localised outbreaks.
Please be considerate towards your neighbours and the environment that you and they live in. It is your responsibility to ensure any bulky waste you may have is removed by your local council or a reputable company.
Support
If you have concerns about paying your rent, then please contact us on 0303 123 1890 for individual guidance about the support services available.
If you need other help or advice from Guinness please visit http://www.guinnesspartnership.com or call us on 0303 123 1890.
As above, if you think any of your neighbours might need any extra support please let us know and we will contact them.
If you need additional help, please contact your local Council or look at their website, or go to http://www.gov.uk/coronavirus.
Keeping up to date
Please remember to keep your contact details up to date on http://www.guinnesspartnership.com/myguinness and regularly check for updates. If you’re not registered for a MyGuinness account, you can still provide us with your email address, so you receive future updates and information our services by email.
If you have any questions, please contact our Customer Service Centre on 0303 123 1890.
Shielders face a dilemma: Should I go outside or not?
By Alice Cuddy BBC News 2 June 2020
People across England and Wales with health conditions that make them vulnerable to coronavirus were allowed to spend time outdoors on Monday for the first time in 10 weeks. Some welcomed the chance to finally leave their homes, while others opted to stay indoors.
Under the new rules, people who have been “shielding” are allowed outside once a day with members of their household, or with someone from another household while maintaining social distancing if they live alone.
More than two million people in England have been strictly isolating at home since March. They include cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and people with severe respiratory conditions.
A surprise announcement relaxing the shielding advice was made over the weekend. Family doctors were told about the new measures only hours before they were made public. A senior official with the British Medical Association said, and the Royal College of GPs advised extreme caution, saying it was not a green light allowing people to return to ways of life pre-coronavirus.
The government said it had engaged with leading health bodies in making the decision, and that it had relaxed the guidelines because levels of coronavirus transmission were significantly lower than when the lockdown was first introduced.
But among some of those now free to leave their homes, there is a dilemma: should they take the risk?
‘There are still too many people dying each day’
I’ve got severe asthma. I’m not going out – I don’t feel comfortable with it, and my parents really don’t feel comfortable with it. I’m not willing to do anything that will worry my mum and dad more than they’re already worried.
I’ve not had a chance to speak to my doctor yet – the last time I spoke to my consultant was earlier on in the shielding process, and he told me not to go outside. I asked him about going into the garden, and he said no more than an hour a day. I don’t see how it’s changed that much.
“It’s very anxiety-inducing, the idea of going back outside”
I did wonder if I was overreacting but then my MP tweeted that her mum is shielding and she’s advising her to stay in her house and not follow this new rule of going out for a walk.
It’s difficult because people are starting to talk about this “new normal” and starting again and getting on with their lives, and I’m still at home.
I think I’ll go outside when my consultant says it’s OK and when the infection rate drops a bit more. There are still too many people dying each day, and too many infections each day for me to feel comfortable. The house has become very much a safe haven. It’s very anxiety-inducing, the idea of going back outside.
Rachael Paget, 35
‘I’ve been craving a proper walk’
I went out at about five in the morning into central Brighton. It was very surreal, very 28 Days Later – the shops were boarded up. Obviously, no-one was around because it was so early. It was a very odd experience actually to feel some wind. There was a lone guy playing the bongos, and it felt like he was putting on a concert just for me.
I had a heart transplant when I was 16, so I’m on immunosuppressants. It had felt like we were a bit forgotten, so when the announcement happened at the weekend, it was a relief.
“For now, I’m going to carry on cautiously”
I live in a flat, and we have a small balcony, but it’s kind of just stick your head out levels of space. This was the first time I’d really stretched my legs and had a proper walk, which I’ve been craving all this time.
I picked 05:00 because while I’m happy to get to go out I only really want to do it when there aren’t other people bustling around. I wore a mask as well.
I’m going to give it a bit of time before venturing out in the middle of the day.
For now, I’m going to carry on cautiously.
Joshua Murray, 32
‘Anything less than complete confidence isn’t going to cut it’
I take immunosuppressants for a condition called myositis and have interstitial lung disease. For a long time, it felt like people like me had been forgotten. Then we heard the news coming out which should have been great – I’ve wanted to leave my house since the start – but the problem was the timing of the message. You can’t divorce an announcement like that from everything else that’s been happening recently.
We’ve got schools going back and the announcement about trying to get retail back on its feet. I live near a park, and I can see people aren’t socially distancing. Lots of prominent scientific voices are saying we’re opening up too early.
And then at the same time, you get an announcement saying the most vulnerable people in society are allowed to get a bit more freedom. It’s a really confusing message.
When you’re at the sharp end of this, and you feel that stepping out of your front door is a gamble then anything less than complete clarity and confidence in the government and people trying to keep you safe just isn’t going to cut it.
For that reason, I’m not planning to step outside my front door for three weeks. I figure that’s enough time to see the impact of the easing of restrictions this week.
I think people like me who are living with the most dangerous realities of this have all become our own experts. I trust my judgment more than I trust the government’s judgment at the moment.
Nick Lockey, 40
‘I’ve missed walking the dog’
I have chronic asthma. At about seven in the evening, we got the dog and walked about three miles to go and sit in the garden of a friend.
I’ve been out to the doctors a couple of times, but it was my first time going out to do something other than that. I’ve got a pretty large garden, so it’s not been as traumatic for me as people in the cities.
I was a bit anxious, but I suppose that’s fairly normal. I had a mask in my pocket just in case.
I took the dog out again on Tuesday morning – it’s something I’ve really missed. My wife’s been having to walk the dog up to now, so she’s very pleased.
Karl Straw, 55
‘I’m afraid of what will happen if I get it’
I have scleroderma and pulmonary arterial hypertension. I can’t see the point in them easing the rules because how can it suddenly be OK to go out and be near other people. People aren’t staying two metres apart. It doesn’t suddenly go away, so I think we’re still in the same dangerous situation we were three months ago.
We got a letter at the beginning of all this saying to stay in shielding because of how dangerous it is for people like me to go out and get the disease but we haven’t heard anything from our consultant since.
Things have to open up at some point, and we have to go back to normal, but I’m afraid of what will happen if I get it. I feel it’s unfair for us all to go out as if it’s normal when there are people still suffering from it, and I’m worried about the NHS – it’s not really protecting them.
I think we should have been slower to relax the rules.
Karen Waller, 60
‘There’s a whole different way of life’
I’ve got a lung condition that I’ve had for about seven years, but it doesn’t really affect my life, so it was a shock when I got the message that I had to shield.
I was really in two minds about going out on Monday, and I was really cautious. I just went for a walk for 15 or 20 minutes.
“I think it’s possibly affected my communication skills.”
It was a really surreal experience – no one expects to not go out for ten weeks. I bumped into someone I knew and had a brief conversation, and I suddenly realised it was my first proper face-to-face contact with someone in 10 weeks. I was just talking gibberish – I think it’s possibly affected my communication skills.
I realised there’s a whole different way of life that I hadn’t seen or witnessed – everything was brand new for me.
Glyn Shemwell, 49
Interviews edited for length and clarity
Guinness Partnership’s Response to Protect Customers & Staff.
We have been liaising with Guinness Partnership, below are the steps they are taking to protect customers and staff.
- We will carry out essential repairs only in customer’s homes, to ensure our customers are safe.
- We are continuing to carry out routine safety tests (gas safety, etc.) as required by law.
- CLOs will only make essential visits to customer homes, and will otherwise work with customers only by telephone or email. Essential visits are likely to be very limited indeed (for example, facilitating access for necessary safety-related repairs or other critical safety issues). Permits for Travel will be issued.
- We will continue to deliver cleaning services.
- We will manage Anti Social Behaviour by telephone insofar as possible.
- We have stopped all lettings, including mutual exchanges.
- We have stopped works to empty homes. Empty homes are being made safe and gas capped.
- We are not carrying out any stock condition surveys inside homes, or to the common parts of blocks.
- We have stopped all planned works, including external works. This will impact the Investment Programme works schedule for India House.
- Internal planned works to our homes that have already started are being completed if possible, and/or left safe.
- We have closed all Community Centres/Facilities.
- We are closing all playgrounds.
- Our Customer Accounts and Customer Support Teams are offering support to customers who are concerned about maintaining rent payments or managing benefits. We will not evict any customer who is in rent arrears arising as a result of a change in financial circumstances due to coronavirus. The Government last week announced a three-month prohibition on the eviction of social and privately renting tenants.
Keep your home hygienic and protect against COVID-19 – Which magazine
Coronavirus: how to clean your home effectively
With many of us now spending more time at home, it’s important to keep up good home hygiene habits to stay healthy, especially if someone in your household is self-isolating.
Get our tips on what to focus on when cleaning, what cleaning products are effective, and why you don’t need to splurge on specialist antibacterial products.
What do you need to clean?
Focus on the high traffic areas that enable pathogens to spread around the home. These include your hands, and frequent touch areas such as:
*Door handles and light switches
*Appliance handles and dials – e.g. kettle handle, fridge door, oven and microwave dials
*TV remotes
*Shared computer equipment such as keyboards
*Toilet and tap handles
*Food prep areas and bathroom surfaces
You also need to think about things that can spread germs, such as sponges and cleaning cloths.
Professor Sally Bloomfield, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, notes that, rather than cleaning the house, the goal is: ‘to prevent the person-to-person spread of infection, which requires good respiratory and hand hygiene [washing hands and covering your mouth and nose if you sneeze or cough] and good hygiene of contact surfaces.’
Which cleaning products work against coronavirus?
As with cleaning your hands, good old soap and water are actually some of the most effective options for cleaning surfaces.
Dr Primrose Freestone, Associate Professor in Clinical Microbiology at the University of Leicester explains:
‘COVID-19 is an enveloped RNA (ribonucleic acid) virus, meaning that proteins and lipids are part of its structure.
Therefore, detergents by themselves – such as soap and even washing-up liquid – work very well at disrupting the virus structure by dissolving the lipids, which in turn inactivates the virus by stopping it binding to our cells.’
The alcohol in hand sanitiser works in a similar way, by dissolving lipids in the virus coating (as long as it’s 60% alcohol).
Cleaning surfaces to prevent infection
Current evidence suggests that COVID-19 (the novel coronavirus) may survive on surfaces for hours or days – research is still ongoing.
Studies have found that similar coronaviruses like SARS and MERS can persist on hand surfaces like metal, glass or plastic for days. But they can be killed within one minute if cleaned and disinfected.
You should first clean hard surfaces with warm, soapy water and then disinfect them.
Which disinfectant products to use
For disinfection, diluted household bleach solutions (hydrogen peroxide or sodium hypochlorite), alcohol solutions with at least 70% alcohol, and certain anti-viral household disinfectants should be effective.
You don’t need to spend extra money on specialised disinfectant products, though. Dr Freestone says that regular detergent and diluted bleach are fine for combating COVID-19.
If you are buying disinfectant, check the product information to make sure it says it combats viruses including influenza and human coronaviruses – an example is Dettol surface cleanser.
Check the usage instructions for best results
It’s also important to follow the instructions carefully. Some products may require you to leave the product on for a set amount of time for it to work properly.
Ventilating the room while you clean is also a good idea. You should also never mix different cleaning products together as they could create harmful fumes.
Do antibacterial products work against COVID-19?
Many products marketed as antibacterial won’t work against a virus-like COVID-19. They need to contain at least 70% alcohol to have any impact on viruses, as opposed to bacteria like E.coli or salmonella.
As above, if you’re buying specific disinfectant products like spray or wipes, check first if they say they work against viruses as well as bacteria.
A lot of these products are in high demand right now and might be out of stock, so it’s not worth stressing yourself out trying to hunt them down, as soapy water and bleach or alcohol-based cleaners will also work.
What about cleaning clothes and laundry?
To kill germs you need to use a bleach or other disinfectant-based laundry detergent containing active oxygen bleach.
Liquid detergents don’t contain bleach, so you’ll need to choose a laundry powder that contains a bleaching agent. Biological powders tend to have more bleaching agents than non-biological powders.
Wash reusable cloths and tea towels at 60 degrees or more between uses, and change frequently. You can also put washing up sponges on a hot cycle in the dishwasher.
What to do if you are living with someone who has COVID-19 symptoms
You’ll need to exercise extra caution if you are living with someone who has symptoms of coronavirus. Especially as everyone in a household where someone has symptoms is required to self-isolate for 14 days.
Dr Freestone says it’s not excessive to disinfect food prep areas, and frequently used door handles (such as the living room, kitchen, and toilet), every few hours if someone in the house has the virus.
You also shouldn’t share any towels, including hand towels and tea towels.
Coughs and sneezes should be caught in tissues, which are then immediately discarded, and hands washed straight after.
Read more: https://www.which.co.uk/news/2020/03/coronavirus-how-to-clean-your-home-effectively/ – Which?
Coronavirus Advice to Tenants
What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
The most common symptoms of coronavirus (COVID-19) are the recent onset of a new continuous cough and/or high temperature.
What should I do if I develop these symptoms?
Anyone who lives alone with even mild symptoms is now advised to self-isolate for seven days.
For people who live with others, the advice is for all members of the household to self-isolate for 14 days from the point the first person showed symptoms. If anyone does develop symptoms towards the end of this period, they should still isolate for seven days from the point of showing signs.
If any ill person in the household has not had any signs of improvement and have not already sought medical advice, they should contact NHS 111 online. If your home has no internet access, you should call NHS 111.
The cough may persist for several weeks in some people, despite the coronavirus infection having cleared. A persistent cough alone does not mean someone must continue to self-isolate for more than 7 days.
What is the advice for tenants who are self-isolating, particularly in shared properties?
Anyone self-isolating must follow the Government’s advice to minimise the risk of infecting others. This is particularly important in flats where individuals share amenities.It’s also crucial that tenants in shared properties let their fellow tenants know if they have symptoms, as the Government advises that the whole household should now self-isolate for 14 days.
The NHS advice includes guidance on simple hygiene measures which everyone can practice to minimise transmission of the virus.
Guinness Partnership may also wish to consider providing additional support for vulnerable tenants, such as the elderly, disabled and those with a long-term illness.
What is social distancing?
As part of the strategy for slowing the spread of the virus, the Government is suggesting that everybody try to practice social distancing as much as is pragmatic.
An increasing number of tenants are working from home over this period, and this practice is soon to increase substantially.
For tenants who have an underlying health condition, or are aged 70 or over, the Government is strongly advising they follow social distancing more stringently than the rest of the population.
Further information on social distancing is available here.
‘My time at Number 10’: an interview with former government housing advisor Toby Lloyd
Inside Housing 12/09/19 BY PETER APPS
Last year, Shelter’s policy chief Toby Lloyd was ushered into Number 10 as Theresa May’s housing advisor. He tells Peter Apps about life at the heart of a floundering government. Photography by Jon Heal
When Toby Lloyd was invited to Number 10 Downing Street to give a presentation on his ideas to solve the housing crisis, he could not have realised quite how life-changing a meeting it would be.
Then head of policy at homelessness charity Shelter, he impressed Number 10’s policy team so much that they phoned him up the next day and offered him a job.
Over the next 14 months, he lived and worked right at the beating heart of government – a resident (self-described) housing nerd inside the small band of policy specialists directly advising prime minister Theresa May.
And then, just as suddenly as it began, it was over. Ms May lost one Brexit battle too many and departed office in July. Mr Lloyd went with her – flotsam in the political wave crashing over Westminster.
He meets Inside Housing after two months back in the real world.
Arriving late, he cracks jokes about how busy it is being unemployed. He has grown long, flowing hair and now sports a look that sits somewhere between a retired New Zealand cricketer and a classical portrayal of Jesus. His appearance is certainly a long way from that of your stereotypical Tory – although this is unsurprising, given that he is not one. What may be more surprising is that not being a Conservative did not leave him out of place in Number 10.
The policy unit advisors, he explains, are hired as subject specialists rather than the general political advisors who float around the Westminster departments. This means there is less of a party-political flavour.
“I wasn’t particularly unusual in being a non-Conservative,” he says. “There were other people who were brought in for social care, particularly… who were not Conservatives by any stretch.”
But it was his ability to talk to Conservatives that carried him into Downing Street. In his years at Shelter, he had developed what he calls a “civic housebuilding pitch” – essentially a way of packaging the charity’s message to appeal to centre-right politicians. He credits Prince Charles with inspiring this vision.
“I got invited to one of those housing jamboree events which just so happened to be at Clarence House as the Prince’s Foundation was unveiling its latest piece of work,” he explains. “There were a huge number of civil society and influencer organisations there basically parroting the same analysis as I’d been plugging at Shelter for many years.
“It was exactly the same – the land market is broken, we don’t build enough homes, they’re not the right type, they’re not affordable to local people and that fuels nimbyism, nothing is working here, we need a new approach based on quality and affordability.”
He realised that with a simple tweak of focus, Shelter’s message could gain traction with a class of politicians who had previously overlooked it. The approach worked.
“The first time I tried it at a Conservative Party conference fringe event I had a room full of councillors from places like Buckinghamshire singing my praises and clamouring for more,” he says. “All I’d done is actually [use] the same Shelter housing market critique I always did, but accompanied with pictures of Prince Charles’ developments… The political divide on this is ephemeral, it’s not real.”
It was this same pitch that caught the attention of Number 10. The lure of such a position of influence could not be ignored – whatever views he held personally about the party offering it.
“You can’t solve the housing crisis without dealing with government,” he says. “If you actually want to fix the housing system for millions of people in this country, you have to have the state do most of the heavy lifting because the problem is just too big.”
By the time he joined in April 2018, Ms May had been without a majority for almost a year and Brexit was taking up more and more of the political agenda. But she remained determined, he says, to deliver something on her “burning injustices” agenda – the speech she famously gave promising social reform after her appointment in 2016.
“[The speech] was up outside her office on a poster,” Mr Lloyd says. “It was referred to frequently – people took it very seriously. Of course, inevitably, Brexit took up so much of the headspace, bandwidth, political energy that there just wasn’t that much left for anything else. But even without Brexit this was a minority government with a lot of divisions within itself and that inevitably means the prime minister’s agenda doesn’t become law overnight.”
Key among these divisions was pushback over parts of Ms May’s housing agenda from Philip Hammond’s Treasury.
“The Treasury’s sacred duty is to look after the nation’s finances and they frequently interpret that as stopping reckless politicians spending vast amounts of money on things they think will be politically popular but might not work,” he says.
“That is fair enough – that’s their job – but if you are one of the people trying to get money spent on things, it can be quite frustrating.”
Mr Hammond’s Treasury took a particular interest in what was being proposed on housing.
“Philip Hammond took an awfully strong personal interest in housing and planning issues,” Mr Lloyd says. “I was often quite surprised how personally involved he was on issues of housing policy.”
It was partly these divisions and political struggles that led to the most significant moment of Ms May’s premiership from a housing perspective.
In October 2018, she used her party conference speech to announce the surprise scrapping of the cap on council borrowing for new Housing – potentially opening the door to the return of mass council housebuilding for the first time in a generation.
“Party conferences… are the one part of the year which is driven entirely by the politicians and not the civil service so it does allow things to be pulled out of the hat a bit more,” he says.
“[Usually] the Treasury has a lot of opportunities to either block things from happening or then slow them down and obstruct them once they’ve been announced. Because of the party conference process this was able to just be announced.
“But then to be enacted, all it took was the secretary of state to write to councils. So it was much harder for the Treasury to then slow down the process.”
The Treasury disliked this policy for the simple reason that the borrowing would go on the government balance sheet. That fact has always driven a dislike of council housebuilding in the department.
“The reason they [the Treasury] are so opposed to that, even at a time when they were agreeing to spend money on social housing, is because of the balance sheet issue,” Mr Lloyd explains. “They will tell you repeatedly that every social home built by a council costs twice as much as a social home built by a housing association.
“Exactly the same money, borrowed from exactly the same people, to build exactly the same house, to house exactly the same people, but just because of the Treasury scoring rules, one counts on the balance sheet and one doesn’t. For a lot of people in the real world that doesn’t make an awful lot of sense, but it matters hugely to the Treasury.”
Aside from the borrowing cap, one of the key focuses of housing policy during this time was dealing with the fallout from the Grenfell Tower fire. Mr Lloyd says this was a genuinely high priority for Ms May.
“There was a real revelation that things had gone dreadfully wrong and government had an urgent moral duty to help the people directly affected and to address some of these issues which underlaid them,” he said.
“Unfortunately, all of those turned out to be things which were long, slow, difficult and expensive to do so I can totally understand the criticism that the response was inadequate but… it was not [for] a cynical reason.”
In particular, he was frustrated by the slow pace at which the government accepted the need to pay for the removal of cladding – offering £400m to social housing providers in spring 2018 and a further £200m for the private sector in May this year.
“The government was always going to end up paying for that, one way or another,” he says. “By delaying and delaying and then being seen to be forced into it you’ve still spent the money but managed to look mean and cruel at the same time.
“The old stereotype of Conservative governments was that they were competent but cruel, whereas Labour governments were kind but incompetent. To position yourself repeatedly in a place where you look both incompetent and cruel is unwise, but we seemed to manage that quite regularly.”
He cites the glacially slow progress of the Social Housing Green Paper, designed to reform the sector, in part to take account of the issues raised by Grenfell, as a
major disappointment – both for him personally and for the then-prime minister.
“The big one that didn’t get finished and was a real regret to her and to me was the Social Housing Green Paper: improving regulation for the housing sector, consumer rights, that whole package of stuff,” he says. “It was a source of real regret that we weren’t able to get that to the next stage of the reform process before she left.”
This was not the only unfinished business from Ms May’s time. An announcement about ending ‘no-fault’ evictions in the private rented sector came right at the end of her tenure, with the consultation still open when she left. Does he hold any hope that the new regime will pick up these policies and carry them on?
“I would hope… just given the policy and the political logic they will carry on with those reforms – I mean why not?” he says. “But really, I have no idea what is going to happen.”
Who does? Politics has never been less predictable. But Mr Lloyd’s guesses should hold some weight. There are few in the housing sector who have been so close to the heart of the machine.
__________________________________
India House Residents Association 