The outgoing Chairman of the Local Government Association (LGA) emphasised the need to grant each area in England a new local council housebuilding deal by 2025
LGA Chairman, Cllr James Jamieson, has called for multiple national housing programmes to combine their funding in order to create a “generational step-change” in council housebuilding. Jamieson’s tenure will end tomorrow (July 4) at the beginning of the Annual LGA Conference in Bournemouth.
Jamison will unveil a detailed six-point strategy for council housebuilding at the event. The plan has the potential to deliver an additional 100 council houses each year in each local authority.
Over 1.2 million people are waiting for a council house
Over recent decades, the rate of housing construction has not kept up with the growth of the population. There is now a significant shortage of affordable homes which has led to a council house waiting list of over 1.2 million applicants. More than 100,000 households in the UK currently reside in temporary accommodation.
Due to the housing shortage, rents and property prices have been escalating at a much higher rate than incomes, particularly affecting low-income families. To address this issue, the government has implemented several new measures.
These include lifting the housing borrowing cap, granting councils access to preferential borrowing rates from the Public Works Loan Board, and permitting councils to retain all Right to Buy receipts for two years.
Council housebuilding needs to accelerate urgently
The LGA has stressed the urgent need to accelerate the construction of genuinely affordable homes. They have called for the government to work faster and for councils to resume their roles as a major builder of affordable homes through a six-point plan for council housebuilding.
The six-step plan is as follows:
- Roll out five-year local housing deals to all areas of the country that want them by 2025 – combining funding from multiple national housing programmes into a single pot. This will provide the funding, flexibility, certainty and confidence to stimulate the housing supply and will remove national restrictions which stymie innovation and delivery.
- Government support to set up a new national council housebuilding delivery taskforce, bringing together a team of experts to provide additional capacity and improved support for housing delivery teams within councils and their partners.
- Continued access to preferential borrowing rates through the Public Works Loans Board (PWLB), introduced in the Spring Budget, to support the delivery of social housing and local authorities borrowing for Housing Revenue Accounts.
- Further reform to Right to Buy to allow councils to retain 100% of receipts on a permanent basis; the flexibility to combine Right to Buy receipts with other government grants; the ability to set the size of discounts locally; and the ability to recycle a greater proportion of receipts into building replacement homes paying off housing debt.
- Review and increase, where needed, the grant levels per home through the Affordable Homes Programme, as inflationary pressures have caused the cost of building new homes to rise, leaving councils needing grant funding to fund a larger proportion of new build homes than before.
- Certainty on future rents to enable councils to invest. Government must commit to a minimum ten-year rent deal for council landlords to allow a longer period of annual rent increases and long-term certainty.
“Housing is too often unavailable, unaffordable, and not appropriate for everyone that needs it. The right homes in the right areas can have significantly wider benefits for people and communities and prevent future public service challenges and costs,” commented Jamieson.
“Addressing the chronic housing shortage must be a national priority. Our six-point plan would lead to a generational step-change in council housebuilding and give local government the powers and funding to deliver thousands of affordable homes a year– at scale and fast,” he concluded.
