Lammy calls for new generation of council houses to fix crisis

London Mayoral hopeful David Lammy has called for reassessments of greenbelt areas for potential development, a large increase in the number of council houses built, adding further restrictions to the Right to Buy, and redefining ‘affordable’ housing.

In an article for the Big Issue, Lammy says that the policy of protecting greenbelt areas from being built on is failing because too many that fall under the definition are “wasteland”. He said he supports:

“A reassessment of some areas of greenbelt – a post-war policy that has not been re-examined for 70 years. It is a policy that inexplicably protects wasteland and concrete car parks that would be ripe for new social housing, and in doing so forces councils to sell off genuine public spaces, like parks and playing fields, to make space for housing.”

The Tottenham MP believes that the amount of social housing being built has fallen because too great a reliance has been put on the private sector to provide enough homes. The private sector has “never been able to build homes in the volume we need”, he writes, and the state must now take a lead on it. “In the 1980s, 4,800 council homes were being built each year in London. Last year that figure was just 40: ten in Ealing and 30 in Southwark. Two thirds of London boroughs haven’t built a single council house in the last decade.”

He also supports redefining ‘affordable homes’, which are currently capped at 80% of the market rate. With house prices having risen so steadily above wages for so long, this is no longer an accurate portrayal of the market. The answer to this, he claims, is linking the value of what falls under the definition of affordable housing to average earnings in each area and “capping it at a maximum of 60% of market value.”

Lammy’s detailed analysis is obviously made with his mayoral campaign in mind (of which he has made housing a major theme), but many of his suggestions seems to stretch far beyond the powers the Mayor of London possesses. He also calls for:

“adding new council tax bands covering the most expensive properties; lifting the borrowing cap on local authorities so they have access to money to fund new homes; providing more support for planning departments so they have the capacity to stand up to the big developers; and tightening the restrictions around Right to Buy to stop thousands more social homes being lost to the private sector.”

Lammy is also the subject of a lengthy profile in The Times (£) today, where he talks about his bid to be Labour’s candidate for Mayor of London, while the Evening Standard have joined him in criticising the short period of time Londoners can sign up as Labour supporters to vote in the open primary: