By Lucy Phillips
7 April 2011
The government today pledged to give money to social housing tenants in England to carry out repairs and maintenance on their homes.
Housing minister Grant Shapps launched a pilot ‘tenant cashback scheme’, which will allow tenants to claim money to do their own repairs or to commission the work from local businesses – and pocket any savings.
Social landlords in England spend an average of £1,000 per property on repairs and maintenance every year, resulting in a total bill of £4bn. The government claims the work could often be carried out by tenants themselves, saving considerable sums.
Shapps said: ‘Social housing should act as a springboard to help people make better lives for themselves. When residents take pride in their homes it saves their landlords cash, so I think it's right that tenants should benefit too.
‘Tenant cashback will do just that, giving house-proud residents more control over looking after their own homes. Doing your own DIY or choosing a local handyman to do the work will allow tenants to pocket any savings they make.
‘And if house-proud tenants drive down the total cost of maintenance, then this could lead to them receiving cheques in the post worth thousands of pounds, to use however they wish.’
Tenants would also be able to pool their resources to create a ‘community cashback’ account, to fund improvements to the local area that would benefit everyone.
No tenant would be obliged to take on more responsibility than they chose to and there would be no new cap on maintenance budgets, the government said.
The scheme was cautiously welcomed. Clyde Loakes, vice chair of the Local Government Association’s housing and environment board, said: ‘The vast majority of people living in council homes are responsible and sensible tenants, and landlords are glad to let them take proper responsibility for the upkeep of their homes. It is right that the approach should be piloted so risks can be identified and responded to.
‘Like any other landlord, local authorities need to be able to ensure that maintenance work on their properties continues to be done safely and to a high standard. So landlords need to be able to ensure work affecting gas, electric and fire safety is done properly.
‘This is vital to making sure this scheme achieves its aim of rewarding tenants and driving down costs without inadvertently exposing councils to a tidal wave of law suits and hefty repair bills for rectifying DIY disasters.’
The Chartered Institute of Housing said the scheme would work only if there was quality control over the maintenance services and that savings would not be made across the board since social landlords would incur administration costs.
Sarah Webb, CIH chief executive, added: ‘The pilots should explore the limits of the scheme – what types of repairs cannot be devolved to tenants for reasons of safety or risk. We hope they will also consider whether the scheme's operation discriminates against particular groups of tenants, for example older or disabled people, those on very low incomes who will struggle to pay for repairs up-front, or those living in old and non-standard homes. Although we have some queries about the scheme, we are strongly in favour of approaches to service delivery which empower tenants, and think that well-designed tenant cashback schemes could deliver benefits to some tenants.’
