星空传媒

It鈥檚 never easy admitting you鈥檝e made a mistake, so the government鈥檚 decision to do its sums again and stump up more money to cover the abolition of local authority social housing grants deserves credit. By all accounts there have been a few red faces over in Eland House as it rapidly became apparent that councils and housing associations weren鈥檛 crying wolf when they said that many of the 7000 schemes financed annually through the grant couldn鈥檛 have gone ahead under the new arrangement.

Debt-free authorities will no doubt have to find alternative sources of funding in the future to make up for the loss of effectively being able to spend the grant money twice under the old regime. But the 拢110m cash boost for this year should at least safeguard all those housing projects that were threatened with the axe after the end of the grant. It may sound churlish, but given the extra 拢197m for the approved development programme and Challenge Fund announced in the Communities Plan came from reshuffling money from the local authority social housing grant, one is left wondering where this new cash injection came from. Apart from alluding to some sort of departmental float, the ODPM is yet to be forthcoming on that one.

Police may be in the front line of the Home Secretary鈥檚 war on drugs, but as we highlight this week (page 22) social housing providers have been drafted in as the second line of defence. It is often their houses that get taken over as crack dens and it is they who have to suffer the legal costs of eviction, the damage to their properties and antisocial behaviour. On the other hand, their allocation strategies can make or break estates and regeneration.

There have been a few red faces in Eland House over the abolition of the social housing grant

Their supported housing initiatives can lift tenants out of vulnerability or provide community support for individuals leaving treatment. While the government has seen the need for this joined-up approach in its new updated drugs strategy, anecdotal evidence suggests that social landlords are not always being included in the appropriate loops. The Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group says that RSLs, particularly smaller ones, miss out on funding, for example, because they are not getting involved with the drugs action teams that bring together community organisations and which coordinate allocation of funds. It is vital for this gap to be closed and for neighbouring landlords to work more closely together to ensure that a drug dealer thrown off one estate doesn鈥檛 set up shop down the road.