No savings ‘yet’ from contentious housing register shake-up, council admits

Hackney Council’s controversial rule change to its social housing register has failed to deliver any administrative savings so far, the Town Hall has revealed.

The local authority’s decision to update its allocation policy for council homes in 2021 sparked concerns from residents and campaigners, some of whom accused the council of trying to cut its oversubscribed waitlist to reduce its administrative burden.

Cllr Sade Etti, cabinet member for homelessness prevention, rough sleeping and temporary accommodation, previously explained that the council’s system was “simplified” to make sure it was fair, accessible and focused on drastic cases such as families who were suffering from “severe” overcrowding or were statutorily homeless.

Those unlikely to get a social tenancy would instead be supported through “bespoke advice to help them find suitable housing”.

At a meeting of the full council last week, Etti was quizzed by Cllr Penny Wrout (Independent Socialist) about what work had been done to monitor the impact of the rule change on overcrowding and poverty.

She also asked whether the updated process had saved or cost the council any extra money.

Cllr Etti said the revised policy had helped those with “extreme housing needs”.

“I am pleased to see that the amount of social housing, as it becomes available, being let to homeless households living in temporary accommodation has increased.

“I am also pleased to tell the whole house that the amount of black and global majority households that have been housed has also increased.

“This mitigates the cost of an increasing number of households facing homelessness approaching the council,” she said.

But she also confirmed that administrative savings “had not yet materialised” due to the ongoing recovery of the Town Hall’s software system.

Last year, Hackney Council said it would procure new “off-the-shelf” IT infrastructure, following three years of struggle with the fallout of a significant cyber attack.

The hack, which took place in October 2020, has notoriously played havoc with the council’s systems, and officers have also blamed it for scuppering record-keeping in other areas.

Cllr Wrout insisted there was a risk the new waitlist criteria had in fact masked the “real need” for social tenancies in the borough, and asked if Hackney was in danger of losing out on more government funding due to the housing register underrepresenting demand.

While Cllr Etti had raised the fact that more council homes were being let to homeless people, Wrout pointed out that the overall number of social tenancies let had fallen by nearly 50 per cent in the last five years.

This figure was provided by the Town Hall’s own policy documents, published in May.

According to the policy, “in 2018/19, only 640 lettings became available despite there being over 45,000 social rent homes in the borough, and this decline has continued”.

The homelessness prevention chief said that while the council was trying to manage expectations, “comfortably, I can tell you we are not missing out on anything”.

“The mayor and other leaders have written to ministers immediately when the new government came in, and we welcome the additional £233 million announced to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping,” she said.

Cllr Etti emphasised that the “refocused” policy was geared towards those in the direst situations, and that the Town Hall had been offering support and advice to help residents find alternative ways to be permanently housed, such as housing swaps with other council tenants.

She also gave a riposte to her former colleague, who quit the Labour benches earlier this year, for now criticising the allocations policy despite her being “part of the group that gave consent to everything”.

But Cllr Wrout said she had seen “little evidence” that residents had got the advice they needed to resolve their housing problems.

Speaking to the Citizen, she said: “The truth is that options are extremely limited, so the council sends a number of website addresses for housing swaps or agencies, but there is little more it can do.

“My fear, at the time of the changes, was that the true scope of Hackney’s housing crisis would be obscured by scaling down the size of the housing register.

“I think my fears are borne out by the fact that, on 20 November, Angela Rayner illustrated the size of the national housing crisis by quoting the number of households on waiting lists — 1.2 million.

“Unbeknownst to her, there are several thousand more in Hackney not counted because they’re not on the housing list since the rules were changed,” she said.

Before the policy change, there were over 13,000 people waiting for social housing in Hackney.

In March this year, the council put the figure at around 8,500.

A recent study by insurance firm Alan Boswell revealed that the average wait time for social housing in Hackney now stands at over 20 years.

The council’s revised allocation scheme splits applicants into three bands:

Band A – Households with an emergency need for housing, who instead of being able to bid as currently, would receive one direct offer of housing.

Band B – Households with a significant need for housing, who would either bid for properties through the lettings system or receive a single direct offer of accommodation.

Band C – Households with a specific need for a restricted type of accommodation, such as sheltered or older persons accommodation.

Those cases deemed to be greatest need are: where households are housebound or residents’ wellbeing is notably impacted for medical reasons due to their accommodation; where someone’s life is threatened by remaining where they are; or where houses are overcrowded to the point of lacking two or more rooms.

In 2021, the Town Hall stressed that the rule change would not in practice change how homes are allocated, because the council was already focused on the most severely overcrowded houses.

The late housing solicitor Nathaniel Mathews at the time called the move “extremely worrying”.

“What they are effectively doing is redefining whether someone needs something on medical grounds or on whether the accommodation is unsatisfactory or for their welfare.

“A lot of people are in effect losing legal recognition,” he said.

In 2023, the local government and social care ombudsman warned Hackney Council that its updated policy created “avoidable uncertainty and raises tenants’ expectations in respect of when a suitable offer will be made”.

The watchdog pointed out that council’s two separate policies — the waitlist’s Band A category for emergency housing, and its “direct offers” for people in urgent circumstances distinct from the waitlist bands — was unclear for residents.

As a result, people were “taken aback” when finding out their expected wait for a home was longer than they were initially told, the Ombudsman said.

Last week Cllr Etti was at pains to highlight the limits on the council’s power to make a dent in the borough’s housing situation.

“What an allocation policy cannot do is significantly impact the wider economic challenges faced by Hackney residents, or increase housing supply.

“We are in the midst of a cost of living and affordable housing crisis. That is increasing poverty levels, driving overcrowding and homelessness.

“Factors such as the previous government policies on welfare reforms, housebuilding, Brexit, immigration and the economy are the key drivers and far more influential than the allocation policy in addressing overcrowding and poverty.

Cllr Etti said the council was anticipating the delivery of the Renter’s Rights Act and additional funding to build social homes, which could see an impact on the cost and security of housing.

She also said she was confident the local authority would publish its annual allocation statistics before the end of the current financial year.

“It’s already on my to-do list.”

A recent report from Centre for London found that more than 300,000 households in the city are currently on waiting lists for social housing.