There are moments in local politics when you feel that you have been struck down by lightning. One of those times was at a meeting with residents on the White City estate. The opposition leader had just damned the administration and called for more 'affordable housing'. This political buzzword sounds marvellous given that all houses are affordable to those who can afford them.
In fact he was calling for more taxpayer subsidised public housing also known as 'social housing'. The response from the audience was a classic. It stopped us both in our tracks: 'We want more affordable housing but no more welfare housing!' This was the first time that I had heard 'welfare' applied to housing and yet it is by far the most accurate description of social housing today.
In so many ways the 21st-century social evil is 'welfare dependency' fuelled by schools which give our kids only a 50% chance of reaching the minimum standard of employability, despite being designated 'good' or 'outstanding' and a social housing system driven by numbers and need which fosters a culture of entitlement and promotes a race to the bottom.
A borough of contrasts
Hammersmith & Fulham Council faces the inner-city conundrum of extremes of poverty and wealth. Hammersmith & Fulham is similar to other inner London boroughs with overall a relatively affluent populace but with pockets of significant deprivation. So whilst the borough has the fourth highest house prices in the country it is also the 38th most deprived borough according to the government's Index of Multiple Deprivation 2007 assessment.
The neighbourhoods experiencing the most significant levels of deprivation (for example child poverty, higher levels of unemployment, poor housing) are those with high levels of social rented housing, including our larger council housing estates. We believe passionately in the 'hand up' rather than a hand out and the council's drive is to make Hammersmith & Fulham the 'Borough of Opportunity' through a commitment to schools of choice and decent neighbourhoods that tackles concentrations of poverty.
Schools of choice
Some of the highest performing secondary schools in Britain are located in Hammersmith & Fulham. These are all voluntary aided church schools: the London Oratory (Catholic boys), Lady Margaret (Church of England girls), both of which have successful sixth forms, and Sacred Heart High (Catholic girls). They are all heavily oversubscribed.
However, in 2006 there were still over 1,400 surplus places in our community secondary schools. The picture is now changing. These schools are becoming increasingly popular as standards improve and there are now only 700 surplus places in the secondary sector. In 2006, only 36% of parents were choosing local schools, but in the current Year 7, 42% of pupils are borough residents.
A significant percentage of parents still choose to educate their children privately and we will continue to reverse that trend through major investment in state-of-the-art secondary schools. The national Building Schools for the Future programme (which helps to fund the rebuilding of schools and deliver new facilities) offers a great opportunity to transform secondary education, enabling us to expand two popular schools and creating sixth forms in every school. Phoenix High School opens its new sixth form in 2010 and Lady Margaret doubles the size of its sixth form as well next year, improving the curriculum offer at post-16 across the borough.
Parents also want greater choice. We are delivering this by creating more academies and trust schools. We set up an independent Fulham Schools Commission led by Baroness Perry, formerly Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools.
It involved leaders of higher education institutions and two local head teachers and a former director of education from another London borough and spent two months meeting parents, heads, governors, teachers and others involved in the schools.
It made several clear recommendations which we are now implementing for the whole borough.
These include:
* Supporting the Mercers' and the IT livery companies who are sponsoring the new Hammersmith Academy due to open in 2011. Building started in May 2009.
* Supporting the creation of the new Fulham College Trust School. This brings together two of our community schools (Henry Compton and Fulham Cross) in a hard federation since 1 September 2009. The core curriculum at this school will be enhanced through collaboration with the nearby 16–19 school (William Morris Sixth Form); by involving a number of local partners such as Roehampton University, Latymer School, and Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College. This new school will continue to specialise in science and languages, as well developing new sports and performing arts facilities. Other partners also include Fulham Football Club, and the Lyric Theatre, who have recently been awarded £3 million from the Department for Children, Schools and Families to build a £15 million "teaching hospital of the arts" attached to the theatre that will offer young people a range of apprenticeships and formal qualifications, such as the new Creative and Media Diploma.
*Planning one of the country's first bilingual primary schools in partnership with the local French lycée and a local Catholic primary school, due to start in 2010.
Decent neighbourhoods
Decent neighbourhoods are neighbourhoods that work. However, it is not untypical on larger council housing estates to see joblessness levels among working age tenants that are twice as high as the London average of just over 13%. General health is also poorer and levels of satisfaction with neighbourhood and services are generally below the borough averages. People also feel less safe and estates can feel separate and alienated from the neighbourhoods that surround them. These are also areas where expenditure on regeneration initiatives (single regeneration budget, New Deal for Communities) and continuing public sector spend is significant. But the expenditure has not yielded the results that we expected. Why?
Race to the bottom
A 2007 government-commissioned study, the Future of Social Housing, by Professor John Hills provided some useful insights. The key findings from the report reflect a national position of a residualisation of social housing. A combination of reasons, including nationally-determined social rent allocation priorities, has led the original purpose of social housing (to provide housing to those lower or modestly paid workers) to be replaced by a welfare model where only those in greatest need are housed.
This not only has the inevitable effect of concentrating poverty but creates perverse incentives to 'become' homeless or establish a worse housing position (described by Sir Robin Wales the Labour Leader of Newham Council as the 'race to the bottom'). Public housing itself begins to have a poor public image being seen as a housing tenure not of opportunity but of last resort.
Working neighbourhoods
Hammersmith & Fulham Council is determined to put opportunity back into the housing options that we offer. Although councils are restricted in terms of providing additional priority to working households for social housing, Hammersmith & Fulham Council has now established a working household quota which will see in 2009/10 13.5% of all new social rent lets going to key worker and low-income households. We believe this provides incentives to work and supports working households on low incomes. Our Lone Parent Initiative, for instance, offers social rented housing to lone parents in housing need who sustain work for a minimum of six months.
Our housing advice services focus on addressing an individual's needs in the round, looking to secure accommodation where we can for those threatened with homelessness and seeking to provide a range of options for those needing to move. Our successes are there for all to see with the numbers of homeless households accepted being reduced to less than a third of the number of households accepted five years ago (159 in 2008/09; 644 in 2003/04).
Following on from previous years' successes, the council in 2009/10 has set a target of arranging 450 lets into the private sector for households, including homeless households, seeking accommodation. The private rented sector today "provides choice and through the councils various lettings initiatives good quality accommodation". Indeed for more and more households the private sector is fast becoming the preferred tenure for many of those seeking help from the council.
Our housing options services are beginning to provide incentives to work and housing options which do not rely on our residents proving how badly off they are. The next step for Hammersmith & Fulham is to develop an enhanced housing options service. This service, partly sponsored by the Department of Communities and Local Government, will focus our efforts even further in working with those at risk of becoming homeless (particularly young people from our council estates) providing targeted training and employment advice and support and a range of services, including mentoring services, aimed at improving self-confidence and esteem, leading to greater personal reliance and to less dependency.
The ultimate aim for the council is to increase employment and increase incomes among its less well-off residents and in this way improve housing opportunities and particularly make homeownership viable for more residents.
Asset management
In this time of economic downturn, however, the council must also look to adapt and change its housing offers and maximise use of its existing stock. That is why we have put in place a dedicated underoccupation and overcrowding team to encourage mobility. That is why over the next year over 280 rent-to-buy units will become available in the borough for working households. This will provide accommodation at 80% of the market rent, with the option for the occupier to buy at any time. This will add to the 644 low-cost homeownership and key worker and intermediate rent units developed in the borough since April 2006.
We are also offering first-time buyer grants to up to 25 households and are intending to launch a reward and purchase scheme later this summer, which will offer up to £40,000 to council tenants to assist with purchase. Such arrangements will provide a bridge into homeownership to those with low or no deposits: the goal for the majority of our residents.
Support for change
There is growing support for change among social housing professionals. However, change of this kind is never easy and we will learn both from our successes and mistakes. The programme that we have developed is innovative and challenges a one-dimensional social housing system driven entirely by housing need.
Regional and central controls, such as those that limit locally determined allocation policies or restrict right-to-buy discounts, make it even harder to meet local needs and demands and changes are required to provide a greater degree of local leadership to improve deprived neighbourhoods once and for all. However, with determination and a clear vision and objectives at Hammersmith & Fulham Council we are slowly moving away from a social housing system that has a tendency to build in dependency to one which rewards, incentivises and provides opportunities to progress.
The state plays its part in providing the opportunity to get on in life, but the individual still has to seize it. Much remains to be done to remove the disincentives for people to take personal responsibility for their own lives.
Stephen Greenhalgh is Leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council and has been a local councillor for over 13 years. He also heads up the Conservative Councils Innovation Unit.
Much credit for the Conservative resurgence in Hammersmith & Fulham has been attributed to his leadership, notable achievements of which include cutting council tax by 3% three years in a row, improving service standards from a three star to a maximum four star official rating, driving up residents' satisfaction with council services markedly and cracking down on crime, with the only New York-style 24 hour council-funded police teams in the UK.
