RMT AGM housing resolution

The recent RMT AGM passed this housing resolution.

“That this RMT AGM 2025 notes the housing crisis, particularly affecting young, low-paid and disabled workers in the UK who can’t afford to buy or rent in the private sector.

We note:

• The lack of appropriate government funding to invest in social rented homes.

• The financial risk to Councils of the rocketing cost of temporary accommodation for homeless households.
• The lack of skills or capacity in council housing departments to build new homes.
• The dramatic reduction in the supply of social and genuinely affordable housing through policies such as the Right to Buy and the ‘demolition first’ approach to ‘regenerating’ council and stock-transferred estates.
• The 1.1m households on social housing waiting lists.
• The lack of effective regulation in the private rented sector.
• The high costs of renting and home ownership.
• The poor quality of some homes in both the social and private rented sectors.
• The effects of housing benefit cuts on vulnerable people who struggle to meet their housing costs.

This RMT AGM 2025 calls for urgent action to invest in a national house building and retrofitting programme to increase housing supply, particularly social rented homes, bring empty homes back into use and legislation to improve the affordability, accessibility, security, safety and quality of housing across all sectors.

We therefore resolve to join other trade unions and housing organisations to:

• Promote the economic benefits of building and retrofitting council and stock-transferred homes,

• Call for the re-establishment of Council apprenticeships and expertise in design & build.
• Support the call for an end to the Right to Buy.
• Campaign for a system of rent controls and better regulation of the private rented sector.
• Campaign for improved regulation and enforcement across all housing tenures to raise standards.
• Establish housing and rent costs as a major factor in national wage bargaining especially for young workers.”