It's no surprise that the government's long-awaited consultation paper on docking housing benefit for antisocial tenants has been greeted with universal condemnation. Charities and landlords have denounced the idea as unjust and unworkable ever since Frank Field MP first came up with it a year ago.

One area of the new consultation causing particular concern is the idea of council officials acting as judge and jury, apparently without needing any corroborative evidence. There is also the argument that the measures already available to authorities, including injunctions and possession orders, are quicker and more effective.

The problem housing providers face is that, whatever their party loyalty, many MPs' surgeries are dominated by the victims of nuisance neighbours complaining of landlords failing to act. Faced with a family that cannot sleep because their bullying neighbour insists on playing music every day at 4am, shoves excrement through their letterbox or torments the children, it's easy to see why politicians would support a crackdown.

That said, the government does not appear to be hell-bent on introducing the measure. The consultation paper is genuinely that. "What counts is what works. It's no point devising a sanction which is not used or which, if used, is not credible and effective," it says.

Perhaps social landlords should be more open-minded too, and have a more objective debate before dashing off their responses to the minister. They should put themselves in the victim's shoes and ask themselves if docking housing benefit would be a genuine deterrent. If the answer is still no, the sector must put together a forceful and coherent argument for concentrating on the existing tools – and it must lobby MPs and the government even more about the hurdles it faces. They include a lack of money for training staff who, after all, are more used to chasing rents than boosting the confidence of witnesses and convincing the magistrates courts that they're taking too long to hear cases.

No transport, inadequate water supplies and the risk of flooding have been flagged up as major hurdles to John Prescott's plan to build 200,000 homes in the Thames Gateway. Now, the lack of electricity must go on the to-do list of the special cabinet committee if the area is to meet his targets. Lack of power supplies are already holding up developments. The government must convince electricity firms that enough demand will be there in the longer term to justify spending millions on new infrastructure now. Giving the go-ahead to the Crossrail east-west rail link would be a much-needed confidence booster.

Source

Housing Today