12th May 2024
Labour leaders Kier Starmer and Angela Rayner – is housing policy radical enough?
The insidious ‘right to buy’ policy was one of the mainstays of the Thatcher government in the 1980’s. The policy was not sold as the privatisation of Council housing as a means to enrich private landlords or to inflate house prices, generating lifelong debt for many. That would have been too honest, too direct for the Tories.
Instead, the policy was sold as a chance to get on the housing ladder, an opportunity for home ownership, the golden ambition promoted as part of the philosophy of the individual above all, as the Tories marched onward in their determination to dismantle any semblance of post war social provision in housing, education and health.
The impact of the policy has been to increase uncertainty for working class families as Council stock diminishes, private rents increase and mortgages soar. As a consequence homelessness and poverty have spiralled.
Figures published by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) at the end of last month showed a sharp rise in the number of children living in temporary accommodation.
There were 145,800 children in temporary accommodation as of the end of December last year, up by a fifth on 20 years ago when records for this measure began, and up 15% on the same period in 2022.
Michael Gove, the DLUHC Secretary of State has admitted that “for years now we have not been building enough homes” and that the Government has missed the supply target of at least 300,000 new homes per year. However, building homes only addresses part of the problem, making those homes affordable and secure for working class families is the real challenge.
Recent Freedom of Information requests, sent by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), found that 41% of all council homes sold under the right to buy scheme are now being let on the private market.
The research also found that the number of homes bought under right to buy and now in the private sector has risen by 3.2 percentage points since 2014/15. This means that around 109,000 more former council homes are now being let privately.
The New Economics Foundation (NEF) has called for a ‘suite of powers’ over housing policy to be devolved from Westminster to local authorities, which would give councillors the “ability to make decisions regarding the future of their council housing stock and give them greater control over the tenure balance of homes in their area”.
Insecurity in the private sector is supposedly being addressed with reforms to the private rented sector. Gove has insisted that the long-promised plan to end tenants being forced from their homes under section 21 notices will take “a matter of months”, but could not give an exact timetable.
With housing security being such a key issue for working class families and with a General Election looming it would be timely for the Labour Party to have a radical approach to housing and look to repeal the right to buy legislation in order to give Council’s more control over housing stock.
Labour does have a plan for housing, which focuses on building on brownfield sites and on poor quality and ugly areas of the Green Belt, which it has redesignated the Grey Belt. Affordable homes are mentioned, in the context of new developments having to target at least 50% affordable housing when land is released. Which sounds fine but a target is not an obligation and housing can quite quickly become unaffordable, when it is on the private market, or it can get sucked into the private rented sector.
As with many policy commitments the Labour leadership position on housing is kept vague in an attempt to avoid any direct criticism. Meanwhile, Homeless Link, the national membership charity for frontline homelessness organisations, criticised the UK government for not uplifting funding to match rising inflation. The group found there were 39% fewer accommodation providers and 26% fewer bed spaces for people experiencing homelessness in England in 2021 compared to 2010 with funding cited as one of the main reasons for the decline.
Abolishing the right to buy would be a massive step towards a policy which could make housing truly affordable for working class families. Labour need to prioritise giving working class families the right to a home, over the Tory philosophy of the right to buy.
Avanti Populo 