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There are 4 item(s) tagged with the keyword "TCPA".
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- 1. Time for a system change in housing delivery
The pandemic has shone a light on what we already know: good quality housing, which is integrated with good quality design, through the prism of place-making, makes a huge contribution to the health and well-being of local communities. We are also all too aware that poor housing has a detrimental effect on health and health outcomes. This is why APSE is hugely supportive of the campaign for a Healthy Homes Act to ensure that its principles are enshrined in law.
APSE and the TCPA recently completed our sixth joint housing research collaboration, which identified many problems within the current system and made recommendations for improvement. In ‘At a crossroads, building foundations for healthy communities’ we called for:
- central government to fully acknowledge local governments role in creating healthy places;
- devolution of more decision-making power to improve co-ordination and communication across public health and planning;
- the planning inspectorate to ensure that local plans address health and wellbeing;
- more ambition on regulating quality in the built environment;
- and for better joined up working across local authorities to promote health and wellbeing.
- 2. Tackling the housing crisis
Will new Housing Minister Esther McVey succeed where her predecessors have failed and finally make significant inroads to solving the housing crisis? Only if she recognises that 100 years on from the Addison Act local authorities must once again play a key role in delivering quality affordable housing.’
There are three main areas of Government housing policy that APSE has called for action on in our latest research, with the Town and Country Planning Association, ‘Housing for a fairer society’.
The first issue is delivering and retaining genuinely affordable housing. A good start would be for Government to reinstate a definition of affordability that is linked to income. Government also needs to provide significantly more direct grant for social rental homes. It should also suspend the right to buy in England as happened in Scotland and Wales, where the numbers of council houses are increasing, for the first time in a generation. In the meantime, Councils should be allowed to keep 100% of their right to buy receipts to reinvest in building. The current validity test also needs reformed in order to close loopholes that allow developers to avoid contributing affordable housing.
- 3. Homes for all: Ensuring councils can deliver the homes we need
APSE's report ‘Homes for all: Ensuring councils can deliver the homes we need’, was launched last week at Parliament. It was a timely reminder of the role local government could play in tackling the housing crisis facing the UK.
Unfortunately the passing of the hugely controversial Housing and Planning Act the day before was a reminder that the current Government don’t see the direct involvement of councils as part of the long term solution. Their preference is clearly to pursue the notion of a home owning democracy, irrespective of whether the public want this or the housing market can deliver it. This approach ignores the many groups in society most in need of affordable homes and who are unlikely to ever be in a position to achieve home ownership or funds for a starter home.
- 4. Housing the Nation: Ensuring Councils can deliver more and better homes
In 1966, the TV drama Cathy Come Home was described as being like 'an ice-pick in the brain of all who saw it' such were the hard-hitting messages of homelessness, poverty and despair. Sadly nearly 50 years later we are still plagued by housing shortages and homelessness. Cathy's despair didn't transfer into the political will to make homes for all a priority.
DCLG released quarterly figures on 21 May and yet again council house building is at the bottom of the pile with just 1,230 homes completed between April 2014 and March 2015 in England. Set these figures against the backdrop of some 1.7 M on council waiting lists in England, and it’s clear that housing remains an ongoing national crisis.
- Displaying: 1 - 4 of 4
Promoting excellence in public services
APSE (Association for Public Service Excellence) is a not for profit unincorporated association working with over 300 councils throughout the UK. Promoting excellence in public services, APSE is the foremost specialist in local authority frontline services, hosting a network for frontline service providers in areas such as waste and refuse collection, parks and environmental services, cemeteries and crematorium, environmental health, leisure, school meals, cleaning, housing and building maintenance.
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