Much of public policy aims to diminish or eradicate social evils or harms, but one of the problems with such policy aims is that it’s very difficult to know how to measure and benchmark progress, write Dr Alice Earley, Dr Gareth James, Professor Mark Stephens and Dr Maheshika Sakalasuriya.
In social policy many benchmarks are essentially arbitrary, which has prompted the development of ‘consensual’ approaches to, for example, measuring poverty or establishing a minimum income standard.
Such an approach isn’t possible with housing costs, as costs vary so much between and within different locations. Of course, housing costs are only meaningful in the context of a minimum standard. But even if it were possible to cost housing, what should a minimum standard look like?
The aim of our research was to seek to advance understanding of attitudes towards residential space standards in the UK – in particular to explore values to help establish a consensual view.
We do so by exploring the values underpinning three contested policies that influence levels of housing consumption in the UK.
Three contested policies
After 2010, Housing Benefit rules were tightened to slow the growing costs of the social security benefit bill.
From 2013, Housing Benefit was cut for social tenants deemed to be under-occupying their accommodation. This ‘removal of the spare room subsidy’ became known popularly as the ‘bedroom tax’.
The previous year, the age at which the eligible rent for Housing Benefit claimed by single private tenants based on self-contained accommodation was raised from 25 to 35. In other words, under this shared accommodation rate (SAR) single private tenants aged under 35 would be expected to share accommodation with people they were not related to.
Meanwhile, the council tax discount (CTD) for households with only a single adult resident, introduced when the Council Tax was introduced in 1993, continued.
These policies send mixed messages. Two are designed to encourage people to limit their consumption of housing, whilst one (CTD) serves to encourage people to consume housing.
It’s not just possible, but likely, that many people are subject simultaneously to a policy designed to limit their housing consumption (eg, the bedroom tax or SAR) whilst benefiting from another that encourages them to consume it.
This maze of conflicting signals presents a challenge for researchers. How do we decide whether these policies are justified? And – since public money is scarce – how should we prioritise between them? Researchers will frequently employ household surveys to establish the impact of policies on different income groups or household types. But who’s to say that the values implicit in these exercises are those held by the public?
Can deliberative methods help?
This contested politics of residential space seemed like an ideal arena to explore whether deliberative methods – a method that aims to establish informed consensus among the public (1) – can help to answer some of these questions.
We held two deliberative workshops – one in Glasgow, one in London – which are similar to focus groups but longer in duration and with more focus on deliberation and reaching consensus (2).
Overall, the workshops were gender-balanced, most age groups were represented, and there was a fairly even spread of participants from across housing tenure types.
For each policy, participants were presented with information and evidence in the form of written and oral briefings, vignettes depicting lived experiences, and hypothetical scenarios designed to encourage them to consider different perspectives.
Participants were encouraged to use this information/evidence to come to a consensus, where possible, on the fairness (or otherwise) of each policy.
Participants were also encouraged to prioritise in an exercise designed to concentrate minds and address competing priorities. After dealing with each policy separately, they were asked to choose between keeping the CTD for single occupants, abolishing the SAR, or reinstating the spare room subsidy (abolishing the bedroom tax).
What we found
Given the nature of the policies, it’s unsurprising that consensus wasn’t possible. There was no over-riding value that all could agree on, or indeed that any of the participants indicated should prevail.
However, a value that did run through the workshops can be characterised as a right to housing. Thus, in the consideration of the CTD for single occupants, the notion of a house as a home was a powerful influence that could trump countervailing references to (all but extreme) income or wealth, or even need.
Similarly, the SAR was seen to undermine a right to self-contained accommodation (giving an indication of a minimal acceptable level of housing consumption) and the characterisation of sharing as an affront to a person’s dignity.
And when it came to the bedroom tax – the policy that most directly pits household against household in a zero-sum game – again many participants saw the house as a home, something inherently personal that shouldn’t be subject to external interference.
Not everyone took this view, and competing values were articulated – for example, in relation to the bedroom tax where at least one participant did take the view that the policy was just because it was concerned with the fair allocation of scarce resources. So the context of social housing being scarce could be appealed to in support of the bedroom tax, but was faced with the countervailing context of a lack of smaller properties into which households could downsize.
Other values that were reflected included need and consistency. These appeared most clearly in relation to the SAR, where the needs of a single person aged under 35 were judged to be no different from those of an older person. Similarly, the bedroom tax was seen as being unfair because it was targeted at social housing tenants judged to have spare bedrooms, whilst homeowners with spare rooms came under no such pressure.
The prioritisation exercises were also revealing. The two groups diverged in their selection of the highest priority: for the Glasgow group it was the abolition of the bedroom tax whereas in London it was the abolition of the SAR. But both groups chose not to select the retention of the CTD as a second priority. This was revealing in that arguments that were essentially consequential and utilitarian seem to have been influential – more so than was the case when considering the policies in isolation from one another.
Thus there were references to the impact on people with low incomes or disabilities who had the least scope to absorb or adjust to a policy. The prioritisation discussions may have allowed participants to move from quite personalised discussions based (often) on real people and scenarios to a broader and impersonal canvass.
Bedrock values
This exercise has clear limitations, not least of which was the small number of workshops. Although deliberative methods don’t seek to select fully representative participants, it’s entirely possible that other groups would have produced a greater diversity of views. The workshops did reflect broadly sympathetic views towards the subjects presented in the scenarios, and there was perhaps surprisingly little use of arguments relating to taxpayers’ money that’s being used or saved in each policy.
However, for applied social scientists the exercise did have a powerful message. Policies are generally assessed within a utilitarian framework, often expressed in monetary terms. It employs economic analysis that’s blind to any qualitative difference between, for example, a tax rebate and social security benefit.
The (limited) evidence presented here suggests that whilst utilitarian arguments have an important place in the public’s mind, especially when prioritising between policies, more qualitative values relating to the value of and the right to a home, reflecting people’s right to dignity, provide what might be called bedrock values. Moreover, when considering individual examples, appeals to competing needs appear less likely to trump the individual’s right to a home, even where that right is dependent on subsidy.
Dr Alice Earley, Dr Gareth James, Professor Mark Stephens and Dr Maheshika Sakalasuriya are part of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE)
References
- Burchardt, Tania. 2014. Deliberative research as a tool to make value judgements, Qualitative Research, 14: 353-70.
- Scottish Government. 2009. Guide 1: Deliberative Methods. Scottish Government Social Research Group Social Science Methods Series, 1-4. [online]. https://tinyurl.com/4p2yaj2x
