Housing Minister Grant Shapps and Communities Minister Andrew Stunell announced plans for the most radical reform of social housing in a generation.
Ministers believe that the current rules to allocate social homes are unfair and, despite £17 billion of spending on social housing over the last 13 years, have left nearly twice as many people on waiting lists.
Key reforms will include:
Flexible Tenancies
Decisions on tenancy arrangements will be made locally.
Currently national policy dictates that social landlords can only offer lifetime tenancies. Social homes for life are allocated to people who may have only a short-term housing crisis, which means households continue to occupy a social home and to pay low rents, even if they no longer need this support.
Councils and housing associations will now have the flexibility to offer new social housing tenants fixed tenancies - offering minimum contracts of two years. The lifetime tenancies and succession rights of existing council and housing association tenants will not be affected.
New tenants will be guaranteed one succession to a spouse or partner, with landlords free to grant further succession rights.
Fairer Allocations
Councils will now be able to set their own rules about who qualifies to go on the housing waiting list.
At the moment anyone can apply to live in social housing, whether they need to or not. The 'reasonable preference' categories for those with the greatest housing needs will be kept, to ensure priority for social housing continues to go to the most vulnerable in society and those who need it most.
Greater Mobility
It will be easier for any of the eight million social tenants in England to move when their circumstances change.
Only 5% of social tenants moved home over the past year compared to almost a quarter of tenants in the private sector.
Existing tenants will be removed from housing waiting lists - freeing up social landlords to work together and focus on helping those tenants wanting to move to do so.
A new National Home Swap Scheme will offer tenants access to details of social homes available for swaps across the country, regardless of which home swap service they have joined - making it easier for them to move whether to a different sized property, to be closer to family, or for work.
Fairer Provision for Homeless People
There will be greater flexibility for councils to make decisions on how best to help people at risk of homelessness at the local level.
Currently some homeless families are turning down the decent private rented accommodation they've been offered as a settled home, and demanding to be provided with expensive temporary accommodation, at huge cost to the taxpayer, until a social home becomes available.
Councils will be able to offer flexible solutions to people at risk of homelessness.
Despite tight public finances, the Government will be investing £400 million to prevent homelessness and rough sleeping.
Affordable Rents
A new 'Affordable Rent' tenancy will be offered by housing associations to some new tenants of social housing from April 2011.
Affordable Rent properties will offer fixed term tenancies at a rent higher than social rent - with landlords able to set rents at up to 80% of local market rents. This aims to enable landlords to raise funds to build more affordable housing.
The Government is investing £4.5 billion in new affordable homes over the Spending Review period, which combined with the reform of social housing should deliver up to 150,000 new homes over the next four years.
New Tenants Power of Scrutiny
The Minister has already announced plans for the abolition of the Tenant Services Authority and instead to give England's eight million social housing tenants strengthened powers to ensure that their landlords provide quality housing and are held to account when problems arise.
Landlords will be expected to support tenant panels - or equivalent bodies - in order to give tenants the opportunity to scrutinise the services being offered and to be involved in resolving disputes.
These changes will be made as part of the forthcoming Localism Bill.
Details of the proposals, some of which will be subject to consultation, are published in Local decisions: a fairer future for social housing. A copy of the paper can be accessed by clicking here .
Early Key Responses
Chartered Institute of Housing
Sarah Webb, CIH Chief Executive said:
"These proposals could mean significant changes for prospective social tenants and people working around social housing.
"We have long called for a more flexible approach to social tenancies that give people a choice according to their changing needs at different times of their lives, but we have always insisted that security and stability should be the starting point.
"If landlords choose to use fixed term tenancies, they will need to be clear what length is most suitable. Just two years may be appropriate for a small number of tenants going through a short-term transition in their lives, but how realistic is this for most people to be asked to move on from their tenancies after such a short period?
"We believe people should be able to stay in their own homes as circumstances change, even if the terms of their tenancy change."
The proposals to introduce a new model of affordable rents could be a useful way of maintaining supply of affordable housing with less government funding.
CIH cautions, however, that more work is needed to ensure the model can work in different parts of the country and that it can give tenants, landlords and lenders the stability they need to plan for the future.
The proposal to enable local authorities to discharge their homelessness duty by housing people in the private rented sector is a fundamental change which must be carefully thought through.
In some areas it will become easier to help homeless households, but the recently announced reforms to Housing Benefit will mean that in some areas households will struggle to secure accommodation in the private rented sector, which will reduce councils' ability to deliver with this new reform.
National Housing Federation (NHF)
The Federation called on the Government to give housing associations maximum flexibility as it unveiled a series of major reforms to how social homes are delivered and managed.
The Federation said that while many of aspects of the Government's consultation paper - Local decisions: A fairer future for social housing - were to be welcomed, the test would be whether they gave housing associations the power to implement the changes on a case by case basis and allowed them to offer the broadest range of housing options in the future.
On the plan to end lifetime tenancies, the Federation said fixed term tenancies could be a positive move towards helping more people access social housing. But, it said it was vital housing associations had the option to continue offering long term tenancies and life term tenancies.
The Federation said it will push for maximum flexibility during the consultation period, which ends in January.
Federation Chief Executive David Orr said:
"What the Government is proposing is a fundamental change to the way social housing is delivered and managed.
"If this new system is to work, then it's imperative that housing associations have as much flexibility as possible so that they can make decisions locally, based on the needs of their local market and the homes they manage.
"In some circumstances, offering a two year fixed term tenancy might be the most suitable agreement to offer new tenants. But housing associations also want to have the option to offer longer-term fixed contracts and life term tenancies where appropriate.
"We will be asking for maximum flexibility from the Government during this consultation period so that we can offer the broadest range of housing options for people in the future.
"The bottom line, however, remains the same - that we need to ensure more new homes are built if we are to deal with the present crisis."