This “housing strategy” won’t do anything to help the thousands who desperately need a decent home

Britain is gripped by a growing housing crisis. The Government’s housing policies are hurting, not working.

In 2009, Grant Shapps said “When it comes to housing, headline-grabbing announcements are easy, but delivery has proved elusive…it’s easy for a housing minister to catch your eye with a headline, but much harder to deliver more homes.”

Well he would know. So far we’ve had 127 housing announcements and reannouncements since the election.

Yet housebuilding is down, homelessness is up, we have a mortgage market where people can’t get mortgages and rents are soaring in the private rented sector.

The number of new homes being built only reached 96,070 in the 12 months to September 2011, down by 7 per cent compared with the 12 months to September 2010. This is 48% lower than under Labour in 2005-06 (July – June) of 183,360.

Homelessness is rising. In the first year of the Tory-led Government, homelessness increased by 10% to 44,160, reversing a five year trend of falling homelessness. Under Labour, homelessness fell by 70%.

Rents are soaring. Average private rents are unaffordable for ordinary working families in 55% of local authorities in England, according to the latest survey by Shelter.

The government cut the budget for new affordable homes by 60% to waste money on an ineffective ‘New Homes Bonus’ holding back families’ aspirations across the country. Labour invested £8.4bn in the 3 years 2008-11 while the Tories will invest just £4.5bn in the 4 years 2011 – 15.

Now the government is offering 10% back of that cut, just £400m to build up to 16,000 homes (just 3,200 affordable homes!). This is an astonishing admission of failure. And this modest measure won’t even scratch the surface.

Labour would repeat the bankers’ bonus tax to build 25,000 new affordable homes. Together with our proposal to cut VAT on home improvements to 5% for a year,, that would mean more homes, that are in a better condition, creating much needed jobs and apprenticeships.

The mortgage indemnity scheme is something we’ve called for and that was pioneered by Labour in Scotland. But the government must get this right. We can’t have a scheme that would simply allow housebuilders to artificially push up the prices of homes. Instead we want a scheme that actually helps responsible lending to people who are locked out of the market by the need for excessive deposits.

On the sale of council housing, there must be a genuine one for one policy to ensure that the stock of social housing doesn’t dwindle. Councils will be worried they cannot deliver if they aren’t able to keep 100% of the receipts. The new homes built cannot be linked to market rents. It would be absolutely wrong to see the combination of falling council stock and rising rents.

Great Labour councils are already innovating to provide high quality, affordable and fairly priced homes – the kind of homes that build communities. My fear is that this out of touch government doesn’t understand how to do this. I fear this housing strategy won’t make much of a difference – less a strategy, more a series of press releases.

The badly housed, the homeless and the families up and down the country who cannot afford to get a mortgage or pay the rent don’t want any more Government gimmicks and false dawns, they want real action.

Jack Dromey is the Labour MP for Birmingham Erdington and a shadow minister for Communities and Local Government.