New Social Development Minister Nelson McCausland
agendaNi profiles the new Social Development Minister and highlights his main priorities.
Throughout his term as MLA (since 2003), the new Social Development Minister’s housing focus has mainly concentrated on his North Belfast constituency, which is the second most deprived electoral ward in Northern Ireland (after West Belfast).
Containing various interfaces and six peace walls, North Belfast is blighted by empty, vandalised buildings. Current regeneration plans for the area were introduced by Alex Attwood and will be overseen by Nelson McCausland. This includes a new website for developers to declare their interest in regeneration opportunities for vacant sites and a regeneration scheme for the ‘gateway site’ at the junction of Carrick Hill, North Street, Peter’s Hill and Millfield.
The deadlock over development of the Girdwood Barracks and Crumlin Road jail site will have to be addressed by McCausland. He and DUP colleagues Nigel Dodds and William Humphrey responded harshly to the former Minister’s decision in March 2011 to consult on the building of 200 social homes on the site, despite the Executive not yet reaching agreement on a master plan for the area, which was drafted in 2007.
They said it was “a very cynical move by the Minister who knows full well that his announcement cannot be turned into reality as it does not have the agreement of the Assembly Executive as required.”
In a February 2008 debate, McCausland said it was important to ensure the area would contain shared housing. He bristled at Alban Maginness’ description in 2006 of the sites at Torrens and Girdwood as a “windfall site” because he claimed that Protestant families had been driven out of those homes “after years of intimidation by republicans.”
McCausland said: “In other words, [Maginness] said that the driving out of Protestant families was a ‘windfall’, a word that, to me, means an unexpected benefit. In that case it was not of benefit to those Protestant families who were driven out.” In 2010 he went further, referring to that incident as “ethnic cleansing.”
The previous Programme for Government contained a commitment to provide 10,000 social and affordable houses by 2013, of which 7,500 would be social and 2,500 affordable.
In addition to social housing, the new Minister’s remit includes Housing Executive reform, social security (including winter fuel payments) and urban regeneration.
The DUP manifesto contains detailed commitments on housing and fuel poverty. Therefore, we can expect to see McCausland attempting to implement the following:
• a comprehensive homes and communities strategy for Northern Ireland, agreed with the housing sector;
• a review of the common selection scheme;
• an examination into creating a single regulator for the whole housing sector;
• legislative changes to strengthen the powers of social landlords to deal with anti-social tenants;
• a mandatory register for private landlords;
• an extension to the programme of installing carbon monoxide monitors in social homes;
• a Northern Ireland Housing Forum involving all housing providers and representatives of government departments including DSD, DFP and the DoE;
• a consultation on a new process to regularly review the needs of tenants of social homes; and
• a cross-departmental homelessness strategy.
The manifesto also pledges to take an early decision on the recommendations from the review of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, with the DUP preference for exploring models that would separate the strategic and landlord functions, and utilise assets to make social housing more self-financing.
In terms of home ownership, the DUP Minister would assist first-time buyers through a graduate home loan scheme for those with degrees in STEM, finance and business subjects, which are “crucial” to improving the economy.
The Minister would promote shared ownership schemes and provide tenants with greater opportunity to own or part- own their home and would explore ways of increasing funding to assist the co- ownership scheme. A government- backed loan scheme for first time buyers would also be established.
The DSD would “strike a better balance” between funding new builds and maintaining existing social homes. It would work with housing associations analysing the potential to enhance their role in developing affordable housing and regenerating communities, whilst trying to achieve efficiency through consolidation and procurement. Affordable broadband in social homes would also be a priority.
On fuel poverty, the DUP says it would “drive [it] down” to a level comparable with the rest of the United Kingdom. Because almost half of Northern Ireland’s population are currently defined as being in fuel poverty, the DUP would focus on those in most severe need. Energy efficiency would be promoted in all homes and “energy brokering” would be encouraged between large public bodies and businesses willing to demonstrate corporate social responsibility.
The Warm Homes scheme would be more flexible and allow for repairs and upgrades of existing broken or inefficient oil and gas heating systems and a boiler scrappage scheme would be fully implemented, according to the manifesto.
Formerly the Culture, Arts and Leisure Minister (2007-2011), McCausland is a fundamentalist. He describes Northern Ireland as: “like the centre of Downpatrick [because] when you go to the bottom of the hill there are three streets that meet at the traffic lights: Irish Street, Scots Street and English Street. That’s what Northern Ireland is, a mixture of all three.” (see agendaNi, Issue 43, pages 8-11)
