Face-to-face
Sean Tobin MRICS, partner at John Rowan & Partners (JRP), discusses his role on the UK Government’s Decent Homes programme
What does your role at JRP involve?
I head up the Public Sector Regeneration (PSR) team at JRP alongside my colleague Ken Morgan. I have previously worked across the many different departments at JRP but since 2006 I have worked on developing and growing the PSR team.
I specialise in operational delivery and cost management for a number of North London Arms Length Management Organisations (ALMOs) working on the UK Government’s Decent Homes programme.
For those of you that don’t know about the programme it was started back in 2001 when the Government decided that all of the UK’s social housing should meet a decent standard by 2010, recently extended to 2014.
To meet this standard all property owned and managed by a council must have reasonably modern facilities, be warm and weatherproof. This means that around 3m homes in the UK will have been refurbished by its completion in 2014, including new kitchens, bathrooms, re-wiring, plastering and roof and window replacement.
In order to deliver the programme each Local Authority undertaking the work created an ALMO to deliver their construction programme. In total there are 69 ALMOs in the UK and we work with a number of them to encourage collaborative working and high levels of performance management.
How did John Rowan & Partners come to focus on the social housing sector?
At JRP we work across all sectors of the social housing sector ranging from new build to refurbishment and we have worked on the Decent Homes programme since its inception.
Currently the social housing sector accounts for 60% of our work and this has been built up over many years. Since the company was formed in 1982, we have always completed works within the sector from working for local authorities such as Hammersmith and Fulham Council and Brent Council to housing associations such as Acton HA (now A2Dominion Group).
I am pleased to say they are all still clients today, 27 years on.
What challenges face the Decent Homes programme and what are the solutions?
In the current economic climate ensuring value for money for the public purse whilst upholding the values of partnering is definitely one of the biggest challenges at present for the social housing sector.
Cost and competitive price are coming under scrutiny and cost consultants are going to need to be innovative in establishing the market prices, competitiveness and value for money, whilst ensuring quality, performance and satisfaction is not compromised.
The Government’s entire Decent Homes programme is based on strategic frameworks; these agreements embrace partnering, collaborative working, pain–gain processes and open book accounting in order to seek out the greatest efficiencies.
One of our key roles is to increase delivery, cost certainty and best value for many clients. And with the current economy at its lowest for decades, the focus is now on the ability to justify and determine the correct competitive price to be paid by the client.
It is clearly evident that cost plays a key role in determining value for money and value models for partnering frameworks must move towards taking on market consideration, competitive pricing and establishing the correct price to determine best value in the current economic climate.
Furthermore, what with the Government’s recent announcement that they are reallocating funds from Decent Homes Programmes (circa £300m) to support new build projects, this increases further pressure to ensure efficiencies are driven forward by astute cost managers and value for money attained.
The potential housing revenue account (HRA) revamp may have further advantages for ALMO’s and their Decent Homes Programme. Whereby freeing up of local authority finances will enable increased efficiencies to be gained from the ability to plan for long term programmes and optimise planned maintenance to a Decent Homes standard.
To support this cost managers and asset managers need to be able to take a pre-action approach towards lifecycle costing, cost benefit analysis, user friendly job event trackers, understanding property portfolio’s etc.
Will the Decent Homes programme become a victim of the recession?
Last month newly appointed Housing Minister, John Healey announced that £1.5bn will be invested in building affordable housing and that this would be provided by reallocation of funds from other capital spending programmes including the Decent Homes scheme.
While this statement has created some cause for concern, I should point out that Decent Homes funding will only pay for part of this.
However whilst it is important to get affordable homes built again, it is also essential that we continue to maintain and improve existing stock as new build alone will never satisfy the current housing need.
Healey’s announcement effectively means that any ALMO that hasn’t already reached its two-star rating will not have any guarantee of funding for its planned Decent Homes programme. This includes those most recently launched ALMOs who are heavily investing in preparing for their forthcoming Audit Commission inspections in the next 6-9 months.
In addition to this there is also the issue regarding a change of Government, a General Election will take place by May next year at the latest and this could well mean a change of Government, which in turn will likely lead to a change in policies.
From the Housing Green Paper released in April we already know that if the conservatives get in they will want to replace ‘top-down targets’ with ‘a system of incentives that would allow communities to make some of their own decisions in return for money’ and that local authorities will also get to keep 100% of the council tax from new homes they approve.
Where do you see the social housing sector going post Decent Homes completion?
While the decent homes programme is set to be completed in 2014 there will still be many opportunities for chartered surveyors and construction consultancies moving forward.
Post Decent Homes a large scale maintenance programme will need to be implemented to maintain the 3m homes that have been refurbished and with many of the 69 ALMOs likely to achieve three-star status, there will also be opportunities around new build social housing.
There is also the question of how to tackle the UK’s empty homes and in my mind a clear solution already exists as if we take a look at the work that has already been undertaken by these local authority refurbishment schemes – here there is already an existing knowledge bank of expertise that could be harnessed to deliver a programme of works of this magnitude.
With extensive experience in delivering large-scale sustainable refurbishments on time and to budget, the role that ALMOs can play is a consideration that certainly shouldn’t be ruled out as a viable resource.
Whatever the challenges ahead, by building on the expertise developed to date through the Government’s Decent Homes programme, refurbishment management teams can utilise their knowledge of local areas to regenerate and revitalise.
Now more than ever there is a need for good cost consultants, helping partnerships to develop trust, while also delivering the best quality of work.
It is important that the consultants and contractors should maintain good relationships to ensure that value for money is achieved without damaging levels of trust or partnering relationships.
