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Where the Government has failed, Labour Councils can play a part in tackling the UK’s housing crisis

June 4, 2012 11:11 am

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A report last month produced jointly by the National Housing Federation, Shelter and Chartered Institute of Housing outlined the Government’s failure to get to grips with the housing crisis. In two key areas of housing supply and affordability, the Government is making the problem worse: failing to build new affordable homes, pricing tenants out of existing ones. Tory Councils up and down the country are buying into the Hammersmith and Fulham model – that income, not need or community ties, should determine where you live. Labour Councils, especially in London where most residents’ real incomes are falling as the value of the land they live on is rising, are struggling to meet the demand for affordable housing.

In Southwark there are around 20,000 people on the housing waiting list and it is increasing all the time. Despite being the largest local authority landlord in London, with over 50,000 homes under council management, the reality for many is that they will never get a council home in Southwark.

A rough estimate suggests we would need around £1.9bn in additional capital to build a home for every person or family on our waiting list. An impossibility for councils even in the good times, let alone during a recession and facing disproportionate cuts from this Tory Lib Dem Government.

People on housing waiting lists can expect little relief from the Coalition’s own house building programme. The latest figures show the number of housing starts has fallen by 35% compared to the average achieved during Labour’s 13 years in office. Most people with a basic grasp of economics could have warned Grant Shapps that this would be the consequence of his decision to slash the budget for social housing by £4bn back in 2010.

But this is only half the story. It’s not just that we are not building enough new homes; the Government’s all-out assault on tenants is having a devastating impact on the affordability of housing across the country. Abolishing secure tenancies, slashing housing benefit and creating a new affordable rent at up to 80% of market rents for the local area will mean people in central London boroughs, like Southwark, could soon be priced out of the area.

So what is the solution? In Southwark we have announced that we will build 1000 new council homes by 2020. That will be more council homes in our borough than have been built in the whole of London in the last 10 years.

This is an ambitious goal but by using the returns from our successful regeneration projects we believe we have a secure and sustainable funding solution. There are challenges: for any new development in Southwark we require a proportion of affordable properties to be included as part of that agreement. However in some areas of particularly high land value we may be able to build a greater number of genuinely affordable homes elsewhere in the borough  than could be delivered on-site.

New housing that is council-funded and managed, allows greater control over rent levels and management. It allows for local lettings – where new housing is let to local residents in priority need, enabling the council to re-let existing homes and create better mobility on estates. It also means we can provide specialist housing such as accessible or wheelchair adapted homes responding to the need for properties suitable for disabled people as well as larger properties for families.

This is not a panacea to the housing crisis across the country. We are fortunate to be in an attractive location for developers and there are still tough choices to be made in order to balance meeting housing need with our commitment to genuinely mixed communities. However when the Tories and Lib Dems lack the political will to build more homes and continue to adhere to the misguided belief that tenants in affordable and social housing contribute little, they will never see the true value of council housing. As a result they will never get to grips with the housing crisis. Despite the cuts, Labour Councils should still strive to deliver high quality, genuinely affordable council homes at a time when they are needed most.

Peter John is the leader of Southwark Council

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  • Cllr Ed Davie

    Very interested to see if there are lessons for us across the border in Lambeth Peter

  • treborc1

    Lets be honest about this new labour intentions was to get rid of council housing, my local labour council did one referendum on selling off it’s council housing stock, when it lost that one it took a year with a promise of new kitchens, new bathrooms new windows, then did another referendum and lost that. Then said blow it we will sell the  housing stock without asking, and ended up almost going to court before backing down.

    Then have now paid to have a housing association build homes and refused point blank to do anything with council houses, even refusing to paint houses which are empty, they boarded up nearly 200 houses refusing to spend money.

    Eight years ago labour lost the council no surprise except to labour, and now we have an independent council who spent money on  getting the 200 houses back into use, and have stated they will build 50 council houses, not affordable houses but council houses each year, and to help the Welsh assembly are putting money into it.

    Now then we hear from labour very little about council houses , and many people are not sure when labour talks about affordable houses what they mean cheaper houses to buy, houses from housing association, or what, we do know labour loves housing for the squeezed middle class, and does not like building sink hole estates what ever they are.

    After all with labour we know you have to be in work to get the priority for a home or was that not what Caroline flint was talking about.

    Why do I not talk about the councils, because without money from Government many councils will find it almost impossible to build enough  council houses, Labour has to decide whom it’s going to stand for if it’s people on £40,000 or people who earn £12,000 who cannot to buy

    • aracataca

      I would like to see you head up the debate about Housing within the National Policy Forum of the party. You scream Labour values and by the evidence of this contribution it is clear that you would make a positive and constructive contribution both to the debate and the formation of new and innovative policy developments in housing . Go for it.

      • treborc1

        Pratt

        • AlanGiles

          The nutter with three names is even repeating his own “jokes” now – he did the NPF “joke” to me earlier. Perhaps dementia is settling in as well,  in addition to his forgetting what name he is appearing under.

          • treborc1

             can you imagine him or her holding office thank god people have a better view of candidates. Mind you now they have lived in a council house.

          • AlanGiles

            I really can’t take our “three friends” seriously any longer, but if he is being  serious when he says that council housing is no longer desirable because the “tenant/landlord” is a “Tory idea”, he must have really taken leave of his senses.

            We are increasingly seeing people having to take part-time, or  short-term contract work, wages are not rising very highly, and the employment market is very unstable, likely to remain so for years- and it will be impossible for many people to afford to buy their own homes. Already we hear of people staying in their parents homes into their 30s or 40s.

            The council home is a very good and real alternative to greedy private landlords.

            Unless he is drunk I cannot believe he would reject the idea of council housing for the fatuous reason he gave.

          • treborc1

            Must be in school.

  • aracataca

    Surely one of the reasons why Thatcher and her cronies got away with selling off so many council houses was that by the end of the 70s much of it had fallen into such very bad repair and I know I’ll get shot for saying it but isn’t the landlord-tenant relationship a bit of a Tory idea? Is it really right for a socialist council to be your landlord who doesn’t carry out the necessary repairs to your flat (as was the case in the 1970s on the estate where I grew up). In addition, there is of course the historical legacy of the 60s and 70s where mothers and small children were left marooned in their council flat on the 23rd floor of a tower block.
    The council flat was the perfect solution for my parents who came over from a toiletless crumble down house in the west of Ireland to sleep in London parks in the 1930s but as a comprehensive solution to our current housing crisis I think its merits are limited.

    • treborc1

      Funny how your view of the 1960′s and labour does not really meet with mine.

      Also if Labour thought the selling of council houses was  so evil you would think they have stopped it.

      The only thing wrong with selling council houses of course is not using the money to rebuild, and since labour did not rebuild to many moaning about Thatcher is a bit rich.

      Now labour talks about affordable homes because they are middle class, an affordable homes is a home which can be bought by the middle class, gbecause simple the working class on £13,000 would not be able to buy a home which is priced at £135,000.

      This country now has Housing association which are the bread and butter of the poor, mine owns 5,000 houses is £4 million in debt and has nothing from the government if it goes bust I wonder will we see Miliband say we need to buy these properties or will we hear the market will handle it.

      My memory of the 1970 was my estate of 480 council houses being built, go down the road a mile and the estate of 500  houses and flat being build.

      Simple put why did labour council spent so much flogging off council houses to the private sector and not building

      Housing

      Housing was a major policy area under the First Wilson Government.
      During Wilson’s time in office from 1964 to 1970, more new houses were
      built than in the last six years of the previous Conservative
      government. The proportion of council housing rose from 42% to 50% of
      the total,[28]
      while the number of council homes built increased steadily, from
      119,000 in 1964 to 133,000 in 1965 and to 142,000 in 1966. Allowing for
      demolitions, 1.3 million new homes were built between 1965 and 1970,[24]
      To encourage home ownership, the government introduced the Option
      Mortgage Scheme (1968), which made low-income housebuyers eligible for
      subsidies (equivalent to tax relief on mortgage interest payments).[29] This scheme had the effect of reducing housing costs for buyers on low incomes.[30]

      Significant emphasis was also placed on town planning, with new
      conservation areas introduced and a new generation of new towns built,
      notably Milton Keynes
      – this trend itself a continuation of efforts initiated in the latter
      years of the preceding Conservative administration. The New Towns Acts
      of 1965 and 1968 together gave the government the authority (through its
      ministries) to designate any area of land as a site for a New Town.[27]
      The government also combined its push for the construction of more new
      housing with encouragement and subsidisation of the renovation of old
      houses (as an alternative to their destruction and replacement).[31]
      The Housing Improvement Act of 1969, for example, made it easier to
      turn old houses into new homes by encouraging rehabilitation and
      modernisation through increased grants to property owners.[27]
      The legislation also introduced special grants for installing amenities
      in houses in multi-occupation and government grants towards
      environmental improvement up to an expenditure of £100 per dwelling,
      while approved works of repair and replacement became eligible for grant
      aid for the first time ever.[32]
      Altogether, between 1965 and 1970, over 2 million homes had been
      constructed (almost half of which were council properties), more than in
      any other five-year period since 1918.[12]

      • aracataca

        This is way beyond your usual fare which makes me suspect that it has been lifted from a book. However it does give a comprehensive account of the house building programme of the Wilson government. My point is that the quality of the housing that was built wasn’t generally very good or at least was not maintained properly particularly in the post -oil price crisis period of the mid 1970s. The flats that were built were alienating places in which to live. Some people were so alienated that they did things like piss in the lift and getting the council to repair the buildings (or indeed the pissed in lifts)  was a virtual impossibility. There were colossal design faults and housing schemes were sometimes rightly called ‘a mugger’s paradise’.
        Labour took a huge political hit as it was often the landlord to the tenants who lived in these flats and sometimes didn’t have either the resources or the inclination to carry out essential maintenance and repairs. We don’t want or need to go back to that kind of situation.

      • aracataca

        This is much better than your usual fare which makes me suspect that it was lifted from a book. However, it does give a very comprehensive account of the council house building programme of the Wilson government. Nobody doubts that this government did build a lot of council houses. It’s just that the quality of the houses and flats wasn’t very good. In general terms a lot of the flats and houses were alienating places to live in, indeed so alienating that some tenants deliberately damaged and vandalised their surroundings. There were also major design faults and some housing schemes were rightly called ‘a mugger’s paradise’.
        In general there was little sense of ownership of the public space on the estates and the housing stock was poorly maintained. Trying to get the council to fix lifts, for example, proved horrendously difficult especially in the post 1973 oil crisis period.  Labour took a big political hit for this as they were often landlords to the millions of new council tenants. IMHO we shouldn’t and don’t need to go back to that experience. 

        • treborc1

          William I answered your silly moan and you go off again talking rubbish

  • Mark

    Hmm. The coalition have been in office for just over two years. The Labour Party was in office for THIRTEEN YEARS and did bugger all about the housing crises: despite promising to build substantial quantities of social housing Labour didn’t and made everything much worse by standing by and doing nothing as the private housing bubble expanded and eventually went pop.

    Labour CAUSED the housing crises.

    Let’s be honest.

    • Chris

       The problem is that although Labour from 1997 on did not do as well as it might have on housing the current government are making energetic efforts to totally screw up the rented housing sector – public and private.
      I live in one of the New Towns that treborc1 refers to. Now the local authority finds that 80% of its tenants are in receipt of housing benefit and so the impact of the dreaded “bedroom tax” will come into play. When added to the change in benefit payments rules as a member of the local tenants forum we are concerned about the impact. Our fear is that people will struggle with the impact of the “bedroom tax” and because the “New Town” was built for families – and young families at that  – the most common type of property is a three bedroom family home but now occupied by people below retirement age with few if any dependants, who will have to find extra money from their benefits. The council has no properties to offer them as alternatives and the private sector, including housing associations, has little to offer as well. The local poverty will rise and the local economy will go downhill still further.
      I wonder what the Labour Party nationally is going to do to respond to this crisis. It better be more than the local Borough Councillors who have yet to raise the issue in Council and certainly are not working with the tenants organisations to develop a strategy. But I’m not hopeful because it might be seen as “defending benefit claimants”!

    • Chris

       The problem is that although Labour from 1997 on did not do as well as it might have on housing the current government are making energetic efforts to totally screw up the rented housing sector – public and private.
      I live in one of the New Towns that treborc1 refers to. Now the local authority finds that 80% of its tenants are in receipt of housing benefit and so the impact of the dreaded “bedroom tax” will come into play. When added to the change in benefit payments rules as a member of the local tenants forum we are concerned about the impact. Our fear is that people will struggle with the impact of the “bedroom tax” and because the “New Town” was built for families – and young families at that  – the most common type of property is a three bedroom family home but now occupied by people below retirement age with few if any dependants, who will have to find extra money from their benefits. The council has no properties to offer them as alternatives and the private sector, including housing associations, has little to offer as well. The local poverty will rise and the local economy will go downhill still further.
      I wonder what the Labour Party nationally is going to do to respond to this crisis. It better be more than the local Borough Councillors who have yet to raise the issue in Council and certainly are not working with the tenants organisations to develop a strategy. But I’m not hopeful because it might be seen as “defending benefit claimants”!

      • Mark

        Weren’t Labour broadly “supportive” of the Freud programme of welfare “savings” including the abominable “bedroom tax”? The only thing I seem to remember Liam Byrne protesting about as far as coalition welfare cuts went was the possible extra council tax that “hard working, responsible families” might have to cough up to help address increased problems associated with homelessness and similar due to forced evictions and similar. While I fully agree that the “bedroom tax” is an atrocious and viciously nasty piece of legislation the Labour Party is committed to retaining it if ever returned to office isn’t it? God only knows what will happen to the thousands of mature people affected by this diabolical measure who have nowhere to go and can’t move from under-occupied social housing to the insecure private sector because they cannot persuade a private landlord to offer them a tenancy, or have enough money to pay a deposit against a private dwelling, or afford the substantial moving charges demanded by removal firms to transport their furniture and belongings from one place to another – or whatever. So you end up with people who cannot afford to move because there is nowhere for them to move subsidising their rents out of benefits that are already to low to live on, falling deeper and deeper into poverty, rent arrears, eviction and homelessness.

        The “bedroom tax” is a catastrophe waiting to happen.

        Yet where is the Labour Party?

        Nowhere.   

        • Chris

           The only hope is that the consequences of this stupid policy will become apparent to all and the Labour Party will get its act together.
          I don’t write national policy (sadly) and trying to get the party to listen is becoming a real pain but it must listen. Getting too excited about a few houses misses the point if I’m honest!

        • aracataca

          It is perhaps worth noting that every Labour MP voted against the Welfare Reform Bill. But yes we need to commit to its repeal upon return to government.What Byrne was saying is that making thousands of families homeless which is what this legislation will do especially in London will be very expensive which of course it will be.

          • Mark

            Labour voted against the welfare bill not because it cared about the legions of people who will be impoverished or chucked out of their homes but because the bill might increase the council tax for “hard working families”.

          • treborc1

             Hear hear, sadly labour have become the Tories and the differences are small.

          • Chris

             This thread probably explains why my Labour MP does not like me!

        • AlanGiles

          Fully agree with you Mark. The then Labour backbenchers in 2009 voted overwhelmingly for Freud when Purnell introduced his ignorant report. In opposition they may have voted against Freud’s measures, and Byrne pretended outrage, but trying to point both sides at once just makes the party look unbelievable and hypocritical.

          If Ed Miliband wants to prove that there has been a change of heart, the only way he can do so is by replacing Byrne at DWP

  • aracataca

    Been moderated off for saying that I didn’t think we could go back to the postwar council housing model. What was that about fixing?

    • treborc1

      Do you know what went wrong, it was world war 2

    • Mark

      I think we are going to go back to a pre-second world war over-occupied and homeless model, where families lived in one room in temporary accommodation, moving from place to place like nomads when their short-let tenancies came to an end. Anybody remember “Cathy Come Home”.

      • treborc1

         Must be why they dropped the caravan tax.

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