The magazine Inside Housing is calling on political parties to commit in their general election manifestos to 90,000 social rent homes a year for 10 years. Below is our letter to the editor welcoming the campaign.
“To Martin Hilditch
Editor, Inside Housing
Dear Martin
The Labour Campaign for Council Housing would like to express its support for Inside Housing’s call to political parties to commit in their manifestos to 90,000 social rent homes a year for ten years. As we are sure you are aware the Labour conferences in 2019 and 2021 included the call for Labour to commit to 150,000 social rent homes a year, of which 100,000 would be council homes. Whilst your figure is lower your campaign has the merit of highlighting the urgent need for social rent homes. As it stands at the moment there are no definite commitments from the main political parties for a specific number of social rent homes or the funding necessary for them to be built.
We believe there is a debate to be had, as Tom Murtha has referred to in his letter to you, about who will deliver them. Our emphasis is on local authorities. The commercialisation of much of the housing association sector has seen some of them move away from what they describe as their social purpose, with more of an emphasis on shared ownership and market sales.
In our view government grant should be for social rent homes only. “Affordable rent” is unaffordable for many and drives up the housing benefit bill.
Currently Homes England provides less than £58,000 grant for a social rent home which is insufficient. We believe that at least £100,000 will be necessary to fund each social rent property (as an average). So there is a debate to be had over the funding.
Such a building programme is a matter of political will. Arguments that there aren’t the funds available are false. We should remember that the Atlee government tripled the grant for council housing and built a million homes despite the much worse economic conditions that they faced. The debt to GDP ratio then was 250% as compared to 100% now.
Notwithstanding these issues to be debated we wholeheartedly welcome your initiative which calls for a practical and concrete commitment. Without a large scale social rent building programme we cannot even begin to address the acute housing crisis, reflected in the 1.2 million households on the waiting list and more than 100,000 households in temporary accommodation. We might repeat what Aneurin Bevan said of the housing situation which led him to support the building of more than a million council homes: “How on earth can people be satisfied when the lack of houses is such a fertile source of human misery?”
For our part a number of constituencies have sent in our model resolution to the 2023 Labour conference which calls for Labour to commit to 150,000 social rent homes a year.”
Labour Campaign for Council Housing 