Professor Michelle Norris:

We looked at this issue in a good bit of depth in the report. It is an open secret for people who are involved in the social housing sector that there are some significant problems with standards in the local authority housing sector. Part of this is fundamentally because local authorities, particularly in urban areas, do not have adequate revenue from rents to maintain dwellings. In rural areas where there are semi-detached and detached houses the maintenance costs are generally lower. In urban areas where flat complexes were built in the 1950s, the maintenance costs are higher. The income that local authorities get from the differential rents or income-related rents just is not enough. That means there is not adequate upgrading on an ongoing basis of dwellings. It is actually much more expensive in the long term because we then need to spend a lot of money on completely renovating them in the end.

We suggested, to reform the system, that rents be pegged to the costs of management, maintenance and delivery. We also suggested that tenants be given a housing allowance, like HAP, to help them pay the rent if they could not afford to do so. Such initiatives would provide local authorities with a guaranteed stream of revenue to maintain the dwellings.

We also suggested that local authorities be subject to RTB regulation, including independent inspections as currently they are the only part of the housing sector that is not regulated.