Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Communities and Local Government Committee
Release : 2010-03-23
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 988/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Beyond decent homes by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Communities and Local Government Committee

Download or read book Beyond decent homes written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Communities and Local Government Committee. This book was released on 2010-03-23. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The £40bn Decent Homes Programme has had a positive effect on the living conditions of most social housing tenants, this report finds, but the Government has failed to invest enough resources in the parallel programme to improve homes occupied by vulnerable people in the private sector. The Government must also clarify future funding: it is still unclear how the elimination of the remaining backlog of disrepair (around 3 per cent of social homes) will be funded; and how much will be available to maintain standards in the future. The Government must prevent another backlog of disrepair from building up after the current programme comes to an end in 2010. Carbon emissions reduction targets mean that the entire UK housing stock must be made more energy efficient. The decent homes standard has an important part to play and should be updated to enable this. The use of arm's-length management organisations (ALMOs) to manage council housing has led to improved standards and better planning, though not all councils were able to follow this model. The decent homes standard remains a low benchmark, however. The target for decency applied to private housing should be retained and strengthened by creating a National Indicator for private sector accommodation. A clear long term target should be set at a national level to bring all private sector homes (not just those occupied by vulnerable people) up to the decent homes standard.