Solving the UK’s housing crisis starts with empowering our local authorities

Want. Disease. Ignorance. Squalor. Idleness. Those were the five evils that the 1942 Beveridge Report set out to conquer. At the heart of that ambitious programme, which sought to ensure that our country never again returns to the dark shadow of the dole queue, was the genesis of the modern welfare state.

The Labour Party of Clement Attlee recognised that a decent home for all had to sit at the heart of its transformative programme for government, pledging: “Housing will be one of the greatest and one of the earliest tests of a government’s real determination to put the nation first. Labour’s pledge is firm and direct – it will proceed with a housing programme with the maximum practical speed until every family in this island has a good standard of accommodation.”

Successive governments – Labour and Conservative – rightly prioritised the building of council houses in order to ensure that families had a roof over their head and a base from which to thrive. I should know: my parents in the early years of their marriage benefited from a council house in which they could raise a family.

In those days, waiting lists didn’t stretch to the tens of thousands. You didn’t have to be at risk of becoming homeless or have any severe health needs in order to qualify. There was no stigma attached to living on a council estate. Their home was a castle from which they lived, earned and raised a family.

Then along came Margaret Thatcher and Right to Buy. In a heartbeat, the best quality and most desirable council houses were sold for a song. Many were sold and re-sold and today provide a nest egg for private landlords who seek to make a quick buck out of the fundamental human right to housing. Council housing stock that remained in public hands was increasingly concentrated in the poorest communities and estates became beset by crime and antisocial behaviour. It was, in short, the ghettoisation of Britain by stealth.

Reversing the trend of 40 years of privatisation and decline won’t be easy. But it starts with empowering our local authorities – where Labour is already in power and doing exciting, creative things to transform the communities that we represent – to start building houses again.

I propose a three-point plan to kickstart this council house renaissance, a plan to build a better future. First, we need to reverse the devastation of 12 years of Tory austerity in local government. Labour councils, like my home city of Wakefield, want to be at the forefront of building new homes. But the reality is that Wakefield Council’s budget has been slashed by nearly 40% since 2010, with public spending falling by £159 for every single resident. Reversing that damage and ensuring that local authorities have access both to the capital and revenue streams to invest in new housing stock is integral to solving this country’s housing crisis.

Second, Labour must stick to our commitment to repeal Right to Buy. Whatever the arguments in support of it, the stark reality is that this pernicious piece of legislation has been the driver of one of the most destructive aspects of public policy in the last four decades. There’s no point building new stock, only to repeat the vicious cycle once more. Right to Buy must go, and councils must be freed to reinvest receipts raised from previous sales back into replenishing stock.

Third, we must ensure that the homes we do build are of the highest quality, net-zero and energy efficient, and built around genuine communities and supported by the right infrastructure and facilities. Not just a stock of houses – family homes for generations to enjoy.

There are no silver bullet solutions to the challenge of ensuring that a roof over your head is a fundamental right extended to all and Labour governments for almost a century have grappled with that question. In 1945, Attlee’s administration knew that putting the nation first meant solving the housing crisis – so, too, will Keir Starmer’s.