Hot on the heels of last week’s eagerly awaited Housing Strategy comes some more good news on housing. Most of the debate on housing is rightly focussed on the need to build more houses, or get the ones we have already brought back into use. We need more homes to ensure that we can keep up with the numbers of new households forming every year, and ensure that everyone can have a roof over their heads. But too often, the debate forgets to focus on the quality of houses with the same intensity. This is something that, as Liberal Democrats, we can’t afford to let up on.
So I was pleased to have a flick through a new set of statistics released this week by the Department of Communities and Local Government. The snappily titled “Local Authority Housing Statistics, England: 2010-11: Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix and Business Plan Statistical Appendix” is full of statistics. But the one that stands out for me is on the Decent Homes programme – the government’s plan to bring all council and housing association homes up to scratch.
Despite cuts to public spending to tackle the deficit, the Coalition has committed to spending £2.1 billion on the Decent Homes programme, with 47 councils benefiting over this Parliament, including Lib Dem-run Sutton, South Lakeland, Eastbourne and Kingston.
And the statistics show that the Coalition is making good progress. The number of non-decent homes on 1st April 2010 stood at 291,600. According to today’s stats, as of the 1st April this year, that number had fallen to 217,100 – a drop of 26%. That’s almost 75,000 homes now brought up to the Decent Homes standard. 93% of all social homes now meet the standard, higher than the amount that were predicted to have been brought up to scratch a year ago. With the Green Deal also set to start in October next year to tackle the energy efficiency of homes in our existing housing stock, there is real potential to make significant progress in improving the quality of our homes.
There are a lot of problems to tackle on housing, that’s for sure, with housing numbers, tenure, and affordability all at the forefront of people’s minds. The Lib Dem Housing Policy Working Group is just about to get underway, with the intention of producing a consultation paper for Spring Conference, and a full policy paper for Autumn Conference. We’ll focus on all of these issues, but I’ll be making sure that quality doesn’t fall off our radars. We’d be failing tenants otherwise. Given our strong record on these issues, Liberal Democrats can’t afford to go backwards. We’ve made a good start in government on delivering better quality houses, but there’s still a lot more to do.
Annette Brooke MP is the Co-Chair of the Lib Dem Communities and Local Government Parliamentary Policy Committee.
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4 Comments
However you miss the absolutely crucial point about who pays for it.
The implementation of Decent Homes under Labour was one where leaseholders had no choice but to pay for the work done to their homes.
Consider who these people are.
These are ex-council house tenants who were encouraged by politicians to buy their own homes, of which one of the benefits would be that they pay less – on balance – on their mortgage than if they paid their rent.
Now all of a sudden these people – many on less than £15K a year – are suddenly being forced to pay up to £30 or £40K for these renovations. One builder friend of mine told me that one leaseholder physically tried to stop him from doing the work.
This is a scandal – even worse than tuition fees. At least students will either get a well paid job or will pay less if they earn less. Council house leaseholders on the other hand had no idea this was going to happen to them and they do not earn enough to pay for this.
And to add insult to injury they always get ignored! But then they do not have a NUS to make a fuss and support their rights!
“Hot on the heels of last week’s eagerly awaited Housing Strategy comes some more good news on housing.”
Depends on whether you view subsidies (direct or indirect) to landlords of empty properties and land-banking builders as a “good” thing. Better, surely, to tax their speculative waste, encouraging them to develop, improve or sell their holdings AT NO COST to the taxpayer, reducing rents and making homes affordable instead of fuelling house price inflation yet again and costing us all more than we can afford.
Ho hum.
Should we be proud of a policy involving the sale of Council houses? it was a masterly ploy of Thatcher et al to convert tenants to Tory voters and enhancing home ownership as an investment rather a necessity.
Oh Annette, Annette. Tumour spin has sullied a decent story. The homes that have been made decent were done so with labour funding, not coalition funding. The decent homes work funded by this govt is only just getting underway. So u are taking credit for chancellor darling’s commitment. Sad to see such dissembling when the coalition actually didn’t cut the DH budget by much compared to other dclg cuts. You sadly ruined this good story though.
I have to say, as someone who works in housing, I never realised just how many lies govts of all colours told about it, but now I know the sector, I see that lies and misinformation are sadly commonplace. So disappointing coming from mps I want to like, but can’t.