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Labour MP tells campaigners and sector professionals to ‘keep pushing’ on 90,000-home a year social rent target
A Labour MP has told attendees at the Labour Party Conference to “keep pushing” the government on the 90,000-home annual social rent target.
Dan Tomlinson, MP for Chipping Barnet, was speaking as part of a panel discussion organised in partnership with the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) on the topic of housing as a driver for growth across the economy.
Mr Tomlinson has been selected as one of Labour’s national mission champions for growth, with the aim of helping his party deliver the ‘five missions to rebuild Britain’ they set out in their manifesto.
In response to a question from Shelter, he said: “I know the government needs to build more social homes, alongside unleashing our planning reforms, and getting back to housebuilding obviously.”
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Shadow housing minister: ‘Majority of grant funding under Labour government will be for social rent’But he said it would be up to the chancellor and the prime minister to make a decision on such a target, and how much funding to allocate, potentially at next month’s fiscal event.
Mr Tomlinson added: “But I know that this is something that many MPs care about so I would say keep pushing, because it has been incredibly important in my own life.”
The MP went on to explain his own experience of what he described as “proper social rent” when he was growing up.
“I and many others who’ve just been elected are in politics to provide that economic stability again, to families and to kids who’ve had it [social rent] taken away from them after 14 years of changes.
“So it’s definitely not for me to commit to these figures right now, but I think it’s important, so keep pushing,” he said.
Inside Housing’s Build Social campaign, backed by many across the sector, has been calling on political parties to commit to building substantial numbers of homes for social rent in their election manifestos.
The campaign continues to put pressure on the Labour government to aim for 90,000 social rent homes a year. Housing minister Matthew Pennycook has previously told Inside Housing that he supports the aspiration.
During a lively discussion at the CIH event, Mr Tomlinson also heard how investing in social housing would help to prevent local authorities going bust.
Aileen Evans, group chief executive at Grand Union Housing Group, said: “One of the other things that investing in social housing would do [is that it] would have a clearly proven positive impact on health outcomes and education.
“But in the short term, it will stop councils going bust, because it’s the temporary accommodation costs and the impact of the stress social care services are under are clearly things that we have got to tackle.”
Asked what she would like to see from next month’s fiscal event, Ms Evans said: “£9bn worth of grant for social housing provision.”
This was met with agreement across the panel.
On Monday, delegates heard from the former chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) Committee, who said that grant could be switched from shared ownership to social rent and that he is “sceptical” about the future of the product as a part of the government’s affordable housing plans.
Clive Betts, MP for Sheffield South East, who oversaw the committee when it published a report into shared ownership, said: “I’m sceptical it’s the best way. We did our report on shared ownership – very few people staircase at all, there’s a lot of discontent with conditions.”
The report, published in March, found that shared ownership has “failed to deliver” and needs “urgent reform” after an inquiry found uncapped service charges, rising rents and unfair maintenance costs mean it is unaffordable.
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