Encouraging messages, now Labour must work on the detail
Jeremy Corbyn launched Labour’s affordable housing green paper last Thursday, promising one million new homes over ten years of which a significant number would be for social rent. The ambition was clear: funding will be restored to the level when Labour last held office, and councils will once again become “major deliverers” of social housing. […]
Good news for the sector but what will the rent settlement’s impact be?
The announcement that social rents will rise one per cent ahead of inflation for five years from 2020 has been widely welcomed. The most important aspect of the announcement is the timescale – a five-year settlement, with no further cuts in rents, offers the stability in their incomes that landlords need to plan their investment, […]
Councils and housing associations should define affordability together
If you work for a local authority or housing association, does it know whether its rents are affordable to those on low incomes, and if so how has it worked this out? Does it do its own assessment, or just rely on government guidelines? How will this change in future and what are the implications […]
From rent to buy
There are signs the government may drop its focus on homeownership in response to the referendum’s economic impact and the apparent slowing down of the housing market. But is the real choice between assisting homeowners and helping tenants? Or might we get the best of both worlds? As recently as 2008, a quarter of the […]
The council housing finance settlement is only four years old but it needs the kiss of life
When the majority of councils shouldered £13 billion of extra debt in April 2012 as the price for leaving the old council housing subsidy system, they were promised a settlement ‘intended to endure for the long term’. But the settlement has been undermined by policy changes since then and for many councils it threatens to […]
The council housing sell-off disaster
Forty years ago, there were five million council houses in England, lived in by three out of ten families. Since then the number has declined by two-thirds. The Housing and Planning Bill, which returns to the Commons this week, will make it even more difficult for anyone either to get a council home or to […]
Experts encourage more social housing investment as a way to lower welfare bill
The case for more investment in affordable housing is growing. Two reports launched this week looked at the arguments for a massive programme of affordable house building and both concluded that more investment would significantly reduce the welfare bill. Wednesday’s report from social housing campaign group Shout and the National Federation of Almos warns that […]
We can’t tackle child poverty without investment in affordable housing
It’s a formidable task: there’s cross-party commitment to radically reducing child poverty in the next five years. Indeed, the Chancellor said in the March budget that ‘child poverty is down’. But is that true and what is needed to ensure that the number of children in poverty not only stays down but falls to 10% […]
Even more social rented homes lost in 2014 than in 2013
In the year ending April 2013 the stock of social rented homes in England fell by 19,189 dwellings, the fall in the year to April 2014 was more than twice this, at 43,850 homes. Over the last two years, just over 63,000 homes have been lost to social renting, of which the majority (just over […]
Losing social homes means we are storing up trouble
Our analysis has revealed that England lost almost 35,000 social homes in a year. Chartered Institute of Housing policy adviser John Perry examines the reasons behind the decline and looks ahead to the future. CIH’s assessment of the decline in numbers of social lettings has caught the attention of the Financial Times. Although we still […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on