CIEH Housing Policy Bulletin # 56
31 August 2016
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Government updates
Capacity of Home Building Industry
The Communities and Local Government Committee has launched an inquiry and call for evidence on the capacity of the UK home building industry. A link to the inquiry can be found below:
(Submissions required by 12th September)
All Party Parliamentary Group for Housing and Planning – Inquiry into new sources of housing supply, call for evidence
(Submissions required by 21st September)
English Housing Survey
The latest reports, based on data in the English Housing Survey, are set out below:
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English Housing Survey. Adaptations and Accessibility Report 2014-15
DCLG # English housing survey 2014 to 2015: technical report # Jul 2016 |
Homelessness
Homelessness. House of Lords In Focus briefing note for debate on 7 September 2016 # Aug 2016
Local Government Ombudsman
Review of Local Government Complaints 2015-16 # Jul 2016
Housing and Care for Older People
All Party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People. HAPPI3 Report # Jun 2016
Fuel Poverty Statistics
Two recent reports from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
| Fuel poverty statistics methodology handbook | |||
| Sub-regional fuel poverty statistics methodology: 2016 | |||
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Partner Updates
Regulating the Standards – report of the Homes and Communities Agency
Regulating the Standards. Homes and Communities Agency
Get in on the Act – LGA Briefing on the Housing and Planning Act
Housing and Planning Act 2016 (Get in on the Act)
Overheating in Dwellings: BRE guidance and assessment protocol
| Overheating in dwellings. Guidance document |
| Overheating in dwellings. Assessment protocol |
UK Green Building Council report: Health and Wellbeing in Homes
Health and wellbeing in homes.
Understanding Fuel Poverty; report of National Energy Action
Understanding fuel poverty. Report of the Cheshire Lehmann Fund
The State of the Nation’s Housing; Report of the International Longevity Centre-UK
The state of the nation’s housing: an ILC-UK fact pack.
Disabled Facilities Grants and the Care Act – updates
Written by DFG experts Sheila Mackintosh and Philip Leather, this detailed report provides a fresh insight into the past present and possible future of disabled facilities grants provision. Drawing on unique analysis of the annual data about DFG collected by DCLG from local authorities, this report considers the 25year history of the DFG and looks at the opportunities presented by the national doubling of DFG funding.
Also available The Disabled Facilities Grant: Before and after the introduction of the Better Care Fund – main findings (June 2016)
Care Act 2014: Guidance for Occupational Therapists – Disabled Facilities Grants: DFGs
This new guide about the Care Act 2014 and provision of Disabled Facilities Grants is one of a series of guides to the Act commissioned by Dept of Health and published by the College of Occupational Therapists (COT). Whilst written with a particular focus on occupational therapists, offering practical guidance and case examples, this specific guide is useful to anyone involved in the delivery of DFG.
Research on Fuel Poverty
The National Union of Students have set up a “dating service” between students wanting to conduct a dissertation on fuel poverty and sustainability-related topics and organisations who have a particular research need but not the resource to conduct that research; click here ‘Dissertations for Good’.
The website www.nus.org.uk/dfg acts as a broker, where students and organisations can register and create a profile detailing their areas of interest. They are then partnered up based on their ideas and go on to complete exciting, cutting-edge research as part of the student’s course that will be of real value to the partner organisation.
Any questions please contact
Inadequate Housing in Europe: report of “Eurofound” organisation
Private Retirement Code of Practice
Housing and Hope: The Influence of the Inter-war Years
Northern Ireland: training for the private rented sector
Shelter – report and campaign on private house building
Shelter has published a report with Capital Economics on increasing private house building in England. The report outlines how the government can still meet their target of 1 million new homes in this Parliament, despite the recent economic uncertainty. The separate Capital Economics briefing with future projections on the housing market is here. The Shelter blog on it is here. Shelter is arguing for some innovative measures to increase private house building in light of the recent dip in the market.
The Federation of Master Builders, the largest trade body in the construction industry, released a statement supporting the report here. Further Shelter “big picture” policy work on house building, conducted with KPMG and L&G, can be found at
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Notice Board
HHSRS consistency exercise
I am grateful to Ian Cole at Bristol City Council’s latest HHSRS assessment consistency exercise that can be completed on-line. There are two case scenarios looking at Food Safety and Collision & Entrapment respectively. We’ve set a deadline of the 31/8/2016 for completion and will then analyse the results. Anyone outside of the West of England local authorities are probably going to be unable to let us know the authority they work for but there will be a section to add an email address if they want a CPD certificate issued.
The link to use is uwe.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/woe-consistency-exercise-summer-2016
DFG champions roadshows: free to attend!
Foundations are holding a series of DFG roadshows in October that will cover the current DFG picture and what lies ahead. There will also be best practice examples discussed, workshops and a mini-exhibition. The events are completely free to attend.
You can find more information here: http://foundations.18.holdingsite.co.uk/notice-board/training-events/
Excess Cold Calculator
I am grateful to Chris Johnes at the Building Research Establishment for details of the BRE updated excess cold calculator tool.
The BRE Excess Cold Calculator is a tool that helps EHPs to determine the best course of action to take following an excess cold assessment.
In response to feedback BRE have been looking at how to improve the calculator and have made the following changes:
- Users can now lookup an address using a postcode rather than typing it in manually
- The address will produce an outline of the property directly from Ordinance Survey which allows us to estimate the dwelling dimensions
- BRE modelled data has been included to predict dwelling age, type, number of bedrooms and heating type
Users can alter any of the prepopulated data as necessary but the hope is that these improvements will allow the tool to be used for all excess cold cases.
You can register for a free trial by using the following link: https://uat.excesscold.com