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Labour must adopt bolder housing policies
Labour’s plans to tackle the housing crisis will fail unless they are bold enough to back councils with guaranteed grant, spend more and scrap the Right to Buy, writes Martin Wicks
The ‘Can Labour get to grips with the housing crisis?’ article by Chaminda Jayanetti in Inside Housing talks of Labour’s housing plans being bold.
In our opinion, they are not bold enough.
While Shelter speaks of the need for an annual spend of £10.7bn on social housing, Labour is committed to only £4bn a year.
This is a similar amount as was spent in 2008, taking no account of ten years of inflation. Even worse, it is not just for social housing but for ‘affordable ownership’ as well.
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At the heart of Housing for the Many: a Labour Party Green Paper was a fundamental flaw.
Instead of councils being given a duty to build council housing we were told they will be given a duty to promote ‘affordable housing’.
Rather than abandoning this by-now risible term they are proposing to redefine it, with the three types: social rent, living rent and affordable homeownership.
Under this proposal councils would be able to fulfil their duty without building a single council home.
“Talk of ‘the largest council house building programme for 30 years’ is empty rhetoric without a commitment to significant grant specifically for council housing”
They could simply apply to Homes England for grant to build homes for ‘affordable ownership’. Currently, Labour has no commitment to a specific number of council homes.
Shadow housing secretary John Healey has resisted all attempts to persuade him to commit to a large-scale council housebuilding programme.
Talk of “the largest council housebuilding programme for 30 years” is empty rhetoric without a commitment to significant grant specifically for council housing.
In any case, the number of council homes built in England 30 years ago was a mere 16,000.
Given the current minuscule scale of council housebuilding, local authorities would not be able to immediately move to large-scale building.
The key question is whether or not they would be guaranteed grant on an annual basis.
Without that they will not have the resources nor the personnel to plan and build on a large scale.
Under Mr Healey’s proposal they would have to compete for grant with housing associations that have built on a much larger scale.
In relation to so-called living rent, rent of 30% of local earnings might sound good in London but in some areas it would mean rents higher than social rent.
If living rent housing was provided outside of the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) then presumably it would be private local housing companies (LHCs) building them.
For many councils the main purpose for setting up LHCs is to provide income for council general funds rather than seriously tackling the housing crisis.
Of course, if Labour would commit to significant grant for council housing then there would be no need to set up LHCs, councils could simply build through the HRA.
The funding crisis of council general funds can, in any case, only be resolved by increased central government funding.
“For that to happen the party needs to listen to its members and supporters and overcome the resistance of the shadow housing minister”
The irony of all this is that while Mr Healey refuses to commit to funding a large-scale council housebuilding programme, you can read Lord Gary Porter, Conservative chair of the Local Government Association, reminding us that in the days when 300,000 homes a year were built more than 40% of them were built by councils.
Of course, there is no prospect of his government funding council housing on such a scale.
The only realistic prospect of achieving that is with a Labour government.
For that to happen, the party needs to listen to its members and supporters and overcome the resistance of the shadow housing minister. To seriously address the housing crisis we need to end Right to Buy and build 100,000 council homes a year. Even if it all went to council housing, £4bn a year is clearly insufficient.
Martin Wicks, secretary, Swindon Tenants Campaign Group
At a glance: Labour’s social housing proposals
- Scrap the affordable rent product and introduce new income-linked rents
- Introduce a new “Decent Homes 2” target for social landlords to improve fire safety post-Grenfell
- Make housing associations subject to the Freedom of Information Act
- Prohibit for-profit housing associations
- Set a new target of one million new affordable homes over 10 years, mostly at social rent
- Impose a new duty to deliver affordable homes on councils, introducing a new needs assessment and an affordable new homes bonus
- Establish a new English Sovereign Land Trust to help councils acquire land more cheaply.
- Form a new national tenants’ organisation and commissioner
- A “longer-term aim” for half of all new homes to be “genuinely affordable”
- Give housing associations access to Public Works Loan Board finance
- Consider returning in full the Treasury’s previous year’s share of Right to Buy receipts
- Introduce a planning “presumption” that all developments, including rural and smaller sites, will include affordable housing
- Help councils with no stock to start a Housing Revenue Account
- Fast-track Karen Buck’s Homes (Fitness for Habitation) bill
- Consult on requiring landlords to publish an annual “outsourcing statement”
- Consult on housing associations to be required to have tenants on their boards
