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West Midlands mayor calls on Rayner to release £146m unspent funding for social homes
The mayor of the West Midlands has written to Angela Rayner asking for £146m in funding not spent by his predecessor, to help build around 2,000 social homes.
Richard Parker has called for the funds to be released by the housing secretary. He said the money was ring-fenced for tackling brownfield sites under Andy Street, the region’s former Tory mayor, but did not get spent.
In his letter to Ms Rayner, Mr Parker said construction costs, the difficult housing market and the pandemic meant targets had been missed.
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However, Mr Street’s record on social housing has also been attacked. Ms Rayner told parliament in April he had “used his multimillion-pound housing budget to build just 46 social homes in eight years”.
Around 150,000 people across the West Midlands are currently on council housing waiting lists.
Mr Parker, who was elected in May, said: “This funding, if unlocked, will make a huge difference to thousands of families, giving them somewhere safe, secure and warm to live.
“This is also a statement of intent; I will deliver for people in this region and make a significant difference to people’s lives.”
As mayor of the West Midlands, he has committed to building 20,000 new social homes by the end of the decade and has told Inside Housing the tenure will be his “primary focus”.
The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) was established in 2016.
Since then, through four devolved grant funds and two revolving loan funds, it has helped build around 7,000 homes, according to Mr Parker. Around a quarter of these have been affordable tenures, but he said the WMCA had “not met the housing targets and intervention rates set at the start of each fund programme”.
Mr Street had acknowledged that social housebuilding was a weak point of his eight-year record, but had pointed to better delivery of affordable rent and private-sale homes.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has been contacted for comment.
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