Author Archives: Rachel Bentley and Simon McGrath

Time to talk about social housing

By Rachel Bentley and Simon McGrath | Tue 26th November 2024 - 10:26 am

There are around 3.8million homes available for social rent in  England – around 60% are owned by Housing Associations and the rest by Local Authorities.

There is plenty of talk among Lib Dems about the need for more social housing – access to safe, warm and affordable homes is a key part of happy and healthy lives but the reality for many social housing tenants is very far from those ideals. Damp, mould, huge bills to heat draughty homes and bodged repairs are frequent complaints.  Our Councillors and MPs often receive large numbers of complaints from social housing tenants and while it would be nice to think that local authorities gave a more responsive service than Housing Associations, that is very much not the case. The London Borough of Southwark, London’s largest social landlord, has an appalling record of leaving tenants in shocking conditions with the third highest number of Housing Ombudsman complaints in the UK.

Given how many people live in social housing, it is surprising how little attention is paid to them. It’s striking for example that in Parliament, despite MPs’ inboxes being full of emails about problems with social housing, there are All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG)  for MPs and Peers interested in everything from AI to Autism and Fisheries to Fusion Energy but those dedicated to social housing appear defunct.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 4 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • cim
    The easiest way to demonstrate stability around joining the EU would be to get through the ~ten/twenty year accession process without any UK government pulling ...
  • Nigel Ashton
    I first met Simon circa 1978 when we were both on the Home Counties Regional Executive, he as the ULS rep and me as his YL counterpart. We share many of the sam...
  • Andrew Tampion
    " A clever wheeze might also be for the EU to demand we store half our gold reserves in Brussels, to be repatriated in 20 years time provided the UK has not by ...
  • Anthony Harris
    @David Allen do we have any gold reserves left? I thought that Gordon Brown sold them all at the bottom of the market? :-) He sold so many that he caused a s...
  • David Allen
    Alex Macfie: In principle, of course you are right. However, the EU will be unlikely to give us the time of day unless we find a way to make a Yes vote effecti...