Moving to healthy homes – The Health Foundation

Better housing standards can help reduce the risk to health of poor quality housing, but alone will not be enough to enable healthy homes. Also needed are the right policy structures to ensure standards are met, and consistent improvements across all types of tenure. Wider changes to other elements of housing, including addressing threats to health from insecurity and a lack of affordability, are important too. 

Incentivising change

Given the scale of investment needed, homeowners and landlords will require support to upgrade properties. Tax incentives, subsidised green loans, ‘warm rents’ and increased ‘decent housing benefit’ rates to pay for improved quality could all be considered. An example of a scheme recently trialled in Scotland is an equity loan for energy efficiency improvements. Such schemes are a means of encouraging investment in energy efficiency, while also providing a means of recouping costs in the long term. 

The largest number of non-decent homes are in the owner-occupied sector, so finding a way of improving standards here is essential. To drive this forward, properties in the owner-occupied sector could be inspected when they are listed for sale, allowing potential buyers the chance to see where a property passes or fails the healthy homes standard. The purchasing process could then include incentives for new owners to improve any property to meet the standard, potentially through low-interest loans or lower mortgage rates for compliant properties. A report by the Lenders Project showed that the idea of green mortgages and green loans were both appealing and likely to be taken up by homeowners.

There is an additional need to support an increasing number of older, more vulnerable homeowners with improvements and adaptations to their properties. This is important for the mental and physical health of occupants, but has the added benefit of reducing the burden on health and care services by enabling people to live at home for longer.

Enforcing housing standards

Social housing is regulated and controlled by councils and major landlords. Enforcement of housing standards is more stringent here, but is still not universal, and has been the subject of debate following the recent case of Awaab Ishak and investigations by the media into poor social housing. The government has responded by passing ‘Awaab’s Law’, which forces social landlords to fix damp and mould within strict time limits. 

Private housing is largely unregulated. The new Renters (Reform) Bill aims to address this, but currently does not apply Awaab’s Law to the private rented sector which would force faster action to fix housing quality problems in that sector. It proposes creating the first national register of landlords via a new national property portal. This will assist councils with the enforcement of standards and should allow renters to check whether a property meets basic requirements. However, such a scheme will only be successful if landlords engage positively. And for effective enforcement, financially stretched local authorities will require additional funding. Placing a duty on local authorities to provide this role will also require legislation – but this is not included in the Renters (Reform) Bill. 

Making complaints and redress systems consistent

The complaints process should be standardised for all renters. Currently, as local authorities are not able to take legal action against themselves, social housing tenants are left with a lengthy process involving multiple organisations. 

To increase the level of redress available to tenants, the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act came into force in 2019. The Act does not place any new obligations on landlords, but allows social and private tenants to take their landlord to court if their property (including common areas) is not fit for human habitation throughout the tenancy. The new Renters (Reform) Bill includes provision to create a new private rented sector ombudsman, intended to provide a quicker, cheaper and less adversarial way to resolve issues (rather than through the court system).

Allowing local environmental health teams to take enforcement action where necessary would also streamline the process, while making it consistent across rented tenures. 

Improving security of tenure

An important element of the Renters (Reform) Bill is the ending of Section 21 evictions. This will allow tenants to voice any concerns about conditions within their property without fear of reprisal, protecting them from the strain of being under threat of no-fault evictions. Evictions can cause significant stress, along with affecting employment, education and social support. However, there is now likely to be considerable delay to the implementation because the government have stated it will be dependent on changes to court processes. 

There has also been an increasing number of families moving into temporary accommodation in the last year, and more gradually since 2010. Figure 4 shows the number of households who have been placed in temporary accommodation in England since 2005 – people who have been classed by their local authority as being, or becoming, homeless and in need. 

The data includes households with and without children, and households placed in unsuitable accommodation. Temporary accommodation is funded by local councils – typically it’s a private flat, a council or housing association flat, a room in a bed and breakfast establishment or a hostel.

In June 2023, there were 105,000 households in temporary accommodation – a high since 2005. 68,070 (64%) of those households had children.