Overcrowding has a damaging impact on people’s lives, affecting family relations, child development, education and health. Fortunately, a number of measures are being undertaken to reduce these problems in local authority housing.
In a recent speech, Housing Minister, Yvette Cooper, commented: 'Social Housing should help people get on in life, not hold them back. That means supporting people, not just investing in bricks and mortar.'
The announcement came as a package of measures and extra investment were unveiled, aimed at making social housing fairer, more effective and more personal. These include a new national Overcrowding Action Plan that has an agenda for creating a greater volume of larger homes.
Funding of £15 million will be rolled out over the next three years, helping councils to do more in the worst affected areas. There will be 38 pilot schemes across London, Birmingham, Bradford, Leicester, Liverpool and Manchester.
One of these pilot areas will be Hounslow and Sue Witherspoon, Hounslow’s Acting Director of Housing, welcomes the plans.
One of these pilot areas will be Hounslow and Sue Witherspoon, Hounslow’s Acting Director of Housing, welcomes the plans.
'The recent announcement is very positive,' she enthuses. 'It is about distributing money to try and find the answers rather than saying ‘we already have the answers.’ Considering that 30 out of the 38 pilot schemes are in London, it is clear that this is an urban and economic problem. Many people want to live in highly-populated areas because of the prospects available.'
The proposals will include £3.8 million of funding to develop sub-regional choice-based lettings schemes across the country, which will help people move across local authority boundaries. Priority will also be given to under-occupiers, including the elderly and middle-aged ‘empty nesters’ who want to move into smaller homes or nearer their families.
'It is ironic that there are probably as many under-occupied properties as over-occupied,' explained Witherspoon. 'Often, older people do not want the disruption of being moved. Meanwhile, many people in 3-4 bedroom properties want to move somewhere smaller, but do not want the hassle. Hopefully, employing someone to ‘hold their hand’ along the way will help.'
As part of the plans, over £4 billion will be used to improve existing housing sock over the next three years. And the announcement comes as both Brent and Hounslow Councils have launched their own extension projects to meet the need for larger homes.
With £1.5 million of funding from the DCLG, Brent Council is currently undertaking work on 50 properties, managed by Brent Housing Partnership (BHP). This involves creating a loft conversion or extension and the first sets of properties currently undergoing a resize are due to be completed this December.
One of the benefits of the scheme is that works in the loft should cause little disruption to the homeowners and for this scheme, along with the Hounslow project, all the homes selected for development were on the transfer list, registered overcrowded. Also, as the work is being undertaking on existing properties there is not the added problem of finding land to build on.
As BFP’s Director of Technical Services, Gerry Doherty, observed: 'With such a shortage of space to build in London, it makes sense to try and adapt our existing housing stock to better suit the needs of our families in the Borough.'
For Hounslow Council, a similar project has been launched with £1 million of funding. Twenty houses will have an extension of one or two bedrooms added, either from the ground floor, by loft conversion or by a combination of both.
Witherspoon admits that the work to existing housing stock can only have limited value as only certain properties will be eligible for the extension work and it is expensive to undertake.
However, with the recent backing of substantial funding and strategy from the Government, there will be further ammunition in the fight against overcrowding.
As Mark Bowen, Deputy Leader of Hounslow Council and Lead Member for Strategic Housing, explains: 'We have listened to some overcrowded families who tell us they are very happy in the area they live with their children settled in local schools, but would like their situation improved by having their home extended.
'This makes sense as it avoids the need to uproot a family and it meets, or greatly improves, their housing situation. Whilst the numbers for now are relatively small, this is a case of contributing towards building sustainable communities and we will be looking to take this initiative further in the future.
'As an executive, we know there is more than one solution to alleviating a problem like this, and we are working to make that happen.'
