Like many in the Labour movement, fixing the housing crisis has been a key priority for me before and throughout my journey into politics.
Throughout my early career working on planning reform in the Treasury, to co-ordinating between boroughs at regional and sub-regional levels, to directly programming and delivering social homes in local government, the challenge and potential of social housing has been ever-present to me.
Every social home we build represents a household with a stable roof over their head, shielded from the increasingly unaffordable private rental sector. It is a child who is protected from moving miles to a new school after being rehoused into temporary accommodation; it is a pensioner freed from the worry of their rent increasing beyond their fixed income; it is a carer whose Local Housing Allowance is being reinvested into the state rather than funnelled into a landlord’s bank account. Most importantly, every social home we deliver puts the sector as a whole on a firmer footing, guarantees stable income to run a sustainable service, and provides a tangible asset for registered providers to lend against in building even more social homes.
It is easy to pin the blame for the state of social housing on the first introduction of the Right to Buy, which led to the mass sell-off of council homes, but we cannot let the past 15 years of neglectful Tory Governments of the hook either. From cutting the Affordable Homes Programme by 40% upon entering office, to supercharging the Right to Buy, as well as suppressing rents for years, the Conservatives enabled the sell-off of social homes while stripping away the ability to build more. From 2012 to 2024, 124,000 homes were sold on the Right to Buy, at the same time as the number of households in temporary accommodation increased to 127,890.
This alone is challenging enough, but the Conservatives’ decisions on housing delivery were also deeply harmful by letting developers off the hook with a range of intermediate tenures. The introduction of affordable rent in 2011, and the inclusion of student accommodation and build-to-rent housing within planning guidance from 2019, have all funnelled crucial developer contributions towards other tenures and further weakened social rent.
The fact that this has come at the same time as a historically difficult environment for delivery has resulted in a perfect storm preventing new social homes. Supply chain inflation and skills shortages have all increased the cost of building, at the same time as social housing providers have faced financial squeeze from introduction of important regulation in building safety, social housing regulation, as well as the pressing need to decarbonise our housing stock.
The result has been profound for the sector, as the delivery of new social homes slumped from 60,000 in 2010/11 to under 10,000 in 2023/4.
We need safer, warmer, and better-managed social homes, and we cannot expect social providers to deliver this alongside more homes without substantial support.
And this is exactly what the new Government has provided. Within a single year of power, Labour has introduced a number of reforms which will not only prevent the sell-off of social homes and laying the groundwork for a generational boost to this most important tenure which was laid out in our manifesto.
The Government has curtailed the Right to Buy, reducing the available discounts and setting forward a number of new reforms including ensuring that council tenants are truly long-term residents by ensuring that they have lived there for ten years, removing newbuild council homes from the Right to Buy, and preventing homes sold through the Right to Buy from being let out in the private rental sector.
Importantly, the Government also made it easier to build new social homes, through reforms to planning and focus increasingly on social rent. Three particular changes here have been particularly exciting to me: the decision to instruct England to focus Affordable Homes Programme spending on social rent; the new Compulsory Purchase powers in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill which will allow local authorities to purchase land for social homes at use value, rather than inflated ‘hope value’; and the ‘golden rules’ allocated to ‘grey belt’ sites of low-quality land on the edge of cities, which will prioritise the development of affordable homes.
Finally, the Government has provided a stable financial footing at the most recent Spending Review for registered providers to increase supply at pace. Alongside the much-discussed £39 billion Affordable Homes Programme, other grant funding for decarbonisation and building safety will reduce the pressures faced by the sector to bring existing stock up to date, and a ten-year rent settlement will bring their revenue in real terms back up to 2015 levels and enable for longer term business planning.
The significant investment in social housing by this Government shows a key recognition of the value of a social tenancy. But we cannot rest on the laurels of this progress and we need to continue to find and address faults preventing the development of new social homes.
One of these has to be around developer contributions, the Section 106 process and viability assessments. Local authorities and housing campaigners rightly complain that developers too often sidestep contributions, make the most of loopholes, or renegotiate affordable housing requirements after Section 106 agreements are made, and discerning what is a reasoned response to a fast-changing delivery environment is challenging. This is particularly the case as we look more and more on land value uplift to deliver what the state has failed to do for the past 15 years, whether that is building roads, GP surgeries or schools, or building social homes. We need streamlining of this process to ensure that agreements are conducted transparently and enforced effectively. Prioritising social rent and empowering local authorities to scrutinise developer claims, would all help in this area.
The Government also needs to press forward in its work to reform the Building Safety Regulator. Social housebuilders are those with the least resources and are more likely to be looking into building high rises than homes for market sale, and so ensuring that mandatory guidance is given beforehand and that feedback from failed applications is readily available is crucial as the new regime embeds itself.
Finally, social homes need to be at the heart of the Government’s New Towns vision. If these are to live up to their promise and deliver genuinely new communities in new settlements or urban extensions, then affordable and secure options need to be present for those priced out of home ownership.
Labour’s record of delivery on housing policy in its first year of government has been impressive, and I am proud of the work already done to lay the groundwork for the generational boost in social housing as promised in our manifesto. Undoing decades of decline under the previous Government’s tenure will have a meaningful impact on living standards and make meaningful progress on the human consequences endured by the hundreds of thousands of people in temporary accommodation. We must continue to act quickly and decisively and to prioritise any measures which will create more social homes, and to deliver the change which millions of people voted for a year ago.