Hackney Council joins call from England’s largest local authority landlords calling on the new government to save council homes
Hackney Council has joined with England’s other largest council landlords to jointly publish five solutions for the new government to ‘secure the future of England’s council housing’.
In March, directors from a cross-party group of 20 local authorities - including Hackney, Southwark, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham and Dudley - gathered at a Summit to address an increasingly urgent financial crisis.
Ahead of their full report release later this year, authored by Toby Lloyd and Rose Grayston, an interim report summarises their recommendations.
It warns that England’s council housing system is broken and its future is in danger due to an unsustainable financial model and erratic national policy changes which have squeezed budgets and sent costs soaring. Analysis from Savills shows that councils’ housing budgets will face a £2.2bn ‘black hole’ by 2028.
The report says most council landlords will struggle to maintain their existing homes adequately or meet the huge new demands to improve them, let alone build new homes for social rent unless something is done now.
Across the country development projects are being cancelled and delayed, with huge implications for the local construction sector, jobs and housing market. Rather than increasing supply of much needed homes some councils will have no option other than to sell more of their existing stock to support an ever-shrinking portfolio of council homes.
It sets out five solutions set out detailed and practical recommendations:
- a new fair and sustainable Housing Revenue Account (HRA) model – including an urgent £644 million one-off rescue injection, and long-term, certain rent and debt agreements;
- reforming the Right to Buy policies;
- removing red tape on existing funding;
- a new, long-term Green & Decent Homes Programme
- urgent action to restart stalled building projects, avoiding the loss of construction sector capacity and a market downturn.
For more information see the report
The system for council house funding is broken and needs a radical rethink if we are fully going to provide the support people in hackney and across the country need.
We are one of the largest social landlords and are at the sharp end of the problem the current system has created. This is why we, together with the other councils who have signed up to the report, want to work closely with the government to fix the situation and create a better future for our residents.
Cllr Clayeon McKenzie, Cabinet Member for Housing Services and Resident Participation