Our focus this month has been Housing's Better Future in the run-up to the September launch of our ambitious Manifesto for Change and new "iN business for neighbourhoods" visual image for federation members.
Meanwhile, our work has continued as we represent our members' interests …
Supporting People
Supporting People implementation has continued to be a major area of work for the federation, involving policy representations to government as well as the practical support provided by our Supporting People teams in the regions.
In particular, we have been involved in continuing discussions about contract implementation matters after representations we made to the then housing minister Lord Rooker in March this year. The federation has worked with members to secure change in some approaches to local authorities and we have also had discussions with the Audit Commission and Office of the Deputy Prime Minister about implementation action.
The Audit Commission is likely to establish a study of the implementation of the Supporting People framework, reviewing the national implementation scheme and the operational implementation by individual local authorities. The federation will be involved in the advisory group that will steer this review and we will encourage members to give detailed evidence.
The announcements have now been made on the pipeline funding schemes. We made detailed representations to Lord Rooker on this and in particular about the delay and prospective levels of funding. The additional commitment is £29m, which is somewhat short of the £44m expected. We will want member to provide information to our Supporting People teams about the impact of this in order to continue to make representations. Our principal concern is that there are many high-cost schemes, for example for people with learning disabilities and mental health needs and extra care schemes for the elderly, where the Department of Health has encouraged the use of Supporting People funds to meet its departmental targets but without providing additional resources.
We are discussing with the Housing Corporation a review of the rules on repayment and recycling of the social housing grant to aid schemes where revenue loss at a late stage might need action to remodel or reuse the previously approved schemes.
Final guidance on cross-authority services has not yet been produced and we want to ensure that there is a tie in to their delivery: the announcement is "imminent" at the time of preparing this report.
The publication of guidance on strategic review and value for money is now expected by the end of June or early July.
Regional housing boards
Our regions and central staff continue to give high priority to the work of the Regional Housing Boards, all of which will be producing draft strategies for consultation by the end of June and feedback by early July. Our concentration includes ensuring the attention is given to the "missing links" in the Communities Plan on supported housing requirements, race and diversity issues, and resources for the housing association sector to meet the decent homes standard.
Pensions
Finally, for those members who are participants in the Social Housing Pension Scheme, the Pensions Trust issued the results of the scheme valuation in mid-May and is seeking feedback from employer and employee members by 31 July. The federation is a sponsor of the SHPS and has one representative on the pensions committee that, acting as trustees, will take the final decisions. The scheme valuation shows the fundamentally sound nature of the SHPS and the additional funding requirement is nowhere near the "crisis" levels of private-sector final-salary schemes. The federation's board is recommending that the whole or majority of the additional funding cost requirement is borne by employees. The present employee contribution is, on average, lower than comparable schemes and, in addition, we want to ensure that, by keeping employer costs stable, SHPS employers are to be given incentives to stay in the scheme rather than close it to new entrants.
Regardless of conclusions drawn in individual housing associations by boards, and by employee members, the federation is encouraging everyone to take part in the consultation by returning the priorities form to the SHPS by 31 July.
Source
Housing Today
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