Housing and Regeneration Act 2008

To establish the Homes and Communities Agency and make provision about it; to abolish the Urban Regeneration Agency and Commission for the New Towns and make provision in connection with their abolition; to regulate social housing; to enable the abolition of the Housing Corporation; to make provision about sustainability certificates, landlord and tenant matters, building regulations and mobile homes; to make further provision about housing; and for connected purposes.

The Bill contains provisions to merge the housing investment and regeneration functions of the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships in a new Homes and Communities Agency. The Agency would, by bringing together land and housing, and shifting from grant funding social housing to investing in infrastructure, support the regeneration and delivery of new social and affordable housing, both social and private, and deliver a strategic approach to regeneration.

The Agency would also be enabled to make better use of surplus public sector land and maximise the potential for brownfield development.

The Bill also creates a new regulator of social housing, the Office for Tenants and Social Landlords. The task of this new regulator will be to improve the level of service that social tenants receive and ensure that they have more choice and influence in matters central to their everyday lives.

Key areas

• Aims to reform social housing and social housing regulation to promote better services for tenants
• Supports the delivery of three million new homes by 2020 to meet growing demand and rising aspirations
• Provides for the establishment of new settlements like eco-towns, and for simplifying the ways in which the Homes and Communities Agency would facilitate delivery of these projects
• Introduces sustainability certificates
• Changes the ‘Right to Buy’ legislation
• Implements a European Court of Human Rights ruling on Gypsy and Traveller sites.