Devising Pricing Models for Social Rented Housing: Comparing Experiences in Northern Ireland and Scotland

Social housing in the UK is under increasing pressure to reform its archaic pricing systems that provide tenants with below market rents but in an incoherent and often ad hoc and unsystematic manner. English social housing is now well into a long term experiment to provide both convergence and a national rent structure. Scotland is now undertaking a thorough-going review as is the case in Northern Ireland. The process of reform is one fraught with difficulty. The paper looks at two detailed case studies: Glasgow Housing Association, the largest RSL in the UK; and the very different circumstances prevailing in Northern Ireland. The paper is organised as follows. The first main section looks at the policy context and asks where these pressures for reform have come from? The section also briefly reviews recent policy research in this area. The second section asks what principles might shape rent reform in the social sector. The third main section focuses on Northern Ireland. How are rents set across the province; what are the growing internal and external pressures for reform? What types of reform have been considered and why has the favoured version emerged and what are its strengths and weaknesses? The penultimate section looks in detail at rent restructuring in Glasgow as a result of a transfer pledge made by Glasgow Housing Association. It asks the same questions but notes the very different circumstances applying in Glasgow. The final section concludes the paper by asking what wider lessons emerge from the case studies.