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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I, too, am very pleased to see the noble Baroness back in her place. We look forward to the debate on Report, because by that time she will have had the advantage of seeing how much support there is around the Chamber for the kinds of things she so passionately and powerfully advocates, of which the amendment is an example. I sympathise entirely with the intention behind the amendment. It is obviously vitally important that people with disabilities are matched with housing that fits their needs—there is no argument against that—and that they get the priority they deserve for accessible housing. The noble Baroness will know that we are committed to both those aims. I do not want to labour the point because she has already referred to the ageing strategy, but she will also know that we have now, for the first time, a proper programme of adaptation of lifetime homes and building for a lifetime. This will make a difference in being able to count on homes where people with disabilities know they can be properly and safely housed. It will also make it easier to build wheelchair adaptations for later stages of disability, which we cannot do at the moment with our housing stock. So we have made a modest start there. We have also been able to invest more in the disability facilities grant. In a very tight spending round, I was very pleased that we were able to get a significant amount of extra money for that grant because it is incredibly important, not only to elderly people but to children as well. When it comes to making expensive adaptations, it could make all the difference between people being able to stay in their homes or not. There is no question between us that registers can be exceptionally useful. We have to strive in all the ways that we can to put the systems in place which will make it easier in the future for people with disabilities to have access to the homes that they need and that will suit them. It is important, however, that local authorities and other social landlords have better information on, and are able to quantify, their existing stock of accessible housing. That is why the disability quality scheme, which we published in December 2006, is also committed to the development of a National Register Of Social Housing. It has the hopeless acronym of ““NROSH””. In addition to collecting basic dwelling attributes, NROSH sets a national standard for measuring accessibility and calls on social housing landlords to produce consistent accessibility to information on each dwelling by April 2010. So we are accumulating and articulating the evidence now. That process, which will take us a long way forward, sits alongside the development of choice-based lettings as a principle. This has been one of the most significant changes in recent years. I agree that choice-based lettings is key to helping disabled people access accommodation that meets their needs. Not least, it gives existing and aspiring social housing tenants more control over where they live. We have also set a target for all local authorities to have adopted a CBL scheme by 2010. Under that approach, landlords should determine the accessibility of a dwelling as it becomes vacant, using the standard criteria developed by NROSH, and ensure that when the vacancy is advertised the advert specifies both the type and level of adaptations and who, in terms of their type or level of disability, is allowed to bid for the property. That will provide a way of prioritising accessible housing for disabled people and will give the local authorities a much more target-specific tool than they have at the moment. That means that people with disabilities can choose housing that meets their individual needs using a standardised classification. To have those two systems converging in that way is an efficient and practical way forward and will get results. Crucially, CBL also already offers a key opportunity to improve information about available accessible housing. It is pleasing—and not really surprising—that some CBL schemes already incorporate an accessible housing register, and the number of accessible housing registers will increase under both the single authority CBL schemes and the growing number of larger CBL schemes that bring together a number of local authorities and housing association partners. That is certainly the way to go because it gives us an ability to move across boundaries, and sometimes homes are much more accessible in a neighbouring borough. We need that flexibility. The noble Baroness spoke about the benefits that had accrued in Cardiff. I was interested in that example; it was new to me and I was taken with it. A London-wide accessible housing register is being developed alongside a pan-London choice and mobility scheme. To help that along, we have made available £168,000 to assist London boroughs and RSLs to implement the London-wide accessible housing register. Our officials in CLG are working closely with those who are taking forward the scheme to ensure that it is consistent with the National Register of Social Housing and that they are mutually supportive. We will watch that very closely, because if that model works we can encourage it through good practice. We also need to develop our knowledge of how accessible housing registers might be made most useful. The Disability Equality Scheme also includes a commitment to examine the role and effectiveness of accessible housing registers within the context of our choice-based lettings policy. Several times in the past few hours I have asked noble Lords to wait for the results of this or that review or inquiry but, once again, I ask the noble Baroness to have a little patience, because building up the evidence base is complicated. We have recently appointed Heriot-Watt University to look at the role and effectiveness of accessible housing registers within CBL policy. That will be part of a wider study of how choice-based lettings impact on vulnerable people. Our aim is to ensure that the researchers are thorough and that the study is an impartial and complete examination of the costs and effectiveness of registers that operate within the context of choice-based lettings. The results should be available early next year. I suggest to my noble friend that it would not be appropriate to take any steps that would tie local authorities' hands at the moment. We should wait for that evidence and then make a judgment on how we can make the evidence work in terms of policy and practice. We are fully cognisant of the fact that accessible housing registers can be really useful. I am of the opinion, which I share with my honourable friend in another place, that forcing local authorities to compile registers as a matter of routine may not be the best way forward in terms of what is right for their areas, and they should be free to decide for themselves whether a register would best meet their local needs. There are some outstanding examples. Although we will not compel local authorities to compile registers as a matter of routine, we will continue to encourage the adoption of accessible housing registers through, for example, the statutory guidance on choice-based lettings, which will be published shortly. We will also watch closely how the London model is developing. We will support the dissemination of good-practice models and see where they can be grown elsewhere. We will encourage social landlords and assist them in implementing an accessible housing register in that way. We will certainly look very closely at what the Heriot-Watt research produces and take the steps that seem appropriate to get the best results for local authorities in their communities. I am sure that my noble friend will not be entirely happy with that response, but I hope she recognises that it represents progress. It certainly represents a better way of compiling evidence and policymaking than we have had in the past.