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Grant would ‘ramp up rapidly’ under Labour, says John Healey
Housing grant would “ramp up rapidly” under a Labour government, John Healey has said.
Speaking to Inside Housing shortly after the prime minister’s Supreme Court defeat today – which raises the chances of a general election in the near future – the shadow housing secretary described the £4bn a year previously promised by the party as a “starting point”.
It comes as the conference is due to vote on a motion calling on the party to pledge “at least £10bn a year for housing grant, ringfenced for delivering 100,000 social rented council homes to be announced at the first Budget”.
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Mr Healey said: “We made the commitment two years ago in 2017, in the manifesto that in the first year we’d reset that capital grant to build the low-cost homes at the same level as Labour’s last year, that’s where the £4bn came from as the first year.
“That’s our starting point. We’d expect to see that ramp up rapidly after the first year and we are able to put it in place.
“Some of the programmes at the moment have to start from such a low base, whether that’s 2,640 council homes only built last year for the first time, or just over 6,000 new social rented homes built last year across the country.
“So we’ve got a big challenge and we know what a low base we start from, but that down payment we made as a commitment for a first year in the last Labour manifesto is our starting point which we will produce as part of Labour’s costed plans for this election just like we did last time.”
The government’s current affordable housing grant programme is worth £9bn over five years, while the National Housing Federation (NHF) believes £12.8bn a year is needed.
But Mr Healey claimed that the NHF has conceded “that if there’s anything like £10bn [next year] they wouldn’t be able to spend it”.
He also said that Labour would want housing associations “to be much clearer and closer” to their social purpose.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is understood to have accused large housing associations of being unaccountable at a fringe event for councillors on Sunday.
Mr Healey said this was a “challenge” for the sector.
He added: “Grenfell has brought it back to the sector as well as raised with the public the need for housing associations and our housing providers across the board to do much more to involve the voice of tenants and residents.
“That would be part of our plan, as well as wanting housing associations to be much clearer and closer to the social purpose that many of them were originally founded [on].”
