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Government ‘thinking about’ prioritising more social rent homes, says housing minister
The government is “thinking about” encouraging local planning authorities to prioritise social rent homes, the housing minister has said.
In her address to the National Housing Federation (NHF) summit in Birmingham yesterday, Rachel Maclean said she was “determined to use every possible lever to increase the supply of affordable homes and deliver for those who need them most”.
She continued: “That’s why we’re looking at national planning policy, thinking about changing it to clarify that local planning authorities should do more to prioritise social rent homes.”
Both the NHF and Inside Housing’s Build Social campaign are calling on politicians to commit to building 90,000 social rented homes a year in England over the next 10 years.
Ms Maclean said the government had reduced the number of non-decent homes by 2.5 million since 2010. She repeated a target set out in the 2022 Levelling Up White Paper that the government is aiming to halve non-decent homes in both social housing and the private rented sector by 2030.
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The minister said that Social Housing Act, which passed into law in July, was “an important part of delivering a fitting legacy for all affected by the Grenfell Tower tragedy”.
Asked by journalist Lewis Goodall after the speech if one of the reasons for the one million people on social housing waiting list was ministerial churn, she said: “No, I don’t think that’s got anything to do with the individuals in the role.”
Asked whether stopping small boat crossings was more important than housing to prime minister Rishi Sunak, Ms Maclean said: “If you take any individual priority out of context and try and rank it like that, you’re never going to get a good answer… but the reason why stopping the boats is very important for housing is because the people that are coming in the boats need somewhere to live.
“All of those people who are here, whether they are claiming asylum or being housed, have to have some kind of accommodation. So that is putting pressure on housing more generally across the whole system.
“I strongly believe that stopping the boats is vitally important… so that when we are delivering houses, they can actually be for people who need housing, not people who are coming here illegally.”
On why the government diluted housing targets, she said: “There was no dilution of housing targets.”
Moving on to what would be different for housing after another five years of Conservative government, she said: “Goodness gracious, you are going so far into the future… I don’t agree with the premise of your question.”
Ms Maclean’s speech was preceded by an address from Kate Henderson, chief executive of the NHF, who repeated the organisation’s call for a long-term plan to address the housing crisis.
“We value our relationship with politicians, but politicians need to stop the piecemeal tinkering and contradictory reforms that have happened over the past decades,” Ms Henderson said.
She highlighted research from the NHF that forecast how the housing crisis could worsen if current trends continue. “We could see one in every five families in England – that’s 4.8 million people – living in an unaffordable home by 2030,” she said.
During her speech, Ms Maclean said: “I heard Kate earlier speak about and call for the need for a long-term plan for housing. We agree. We agree that we need to create a stronger, fairer housing market.”
This was underpinned, she said, by housing secretary Michael Gove’s plans to regenerate 20 towns and cities through “inner-city densification and brownfield development”.
The minister was followed later in the day at the conference by Matthew Pennycook, Labour’s shadow housing minister, who pledged to build more social rented homes each year than are sold off or demolished within the “very early years” of the next parliament.
Inside Housing’s Build Social campaign is calling on all political parties to commit to building 900,000 social rented homes in England over the next 10 years, with separate targets for other UK countries bringing the overall total to more than one million.
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