Future of Social Housing

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Paisley.

Recent figures suggest that at least 271,000 people are homeless in England. Of those, 2,400 are sleeping rough on any given night. We desperately need more social housing. In the 1950s, councils were building an average of 147,000 homes a year. Slums were cleared and people moved into decent modern homes. According to figures from the National Housing Federation, by the 1960s, a quarter of all the country’s housing was council housing. There was a belief in state provision of housing.

Since those days, there has been a massive decline in council or social housing. The introduction of right to buy in 1980 under the Thatcher Government reduced the amount of social housing owned by councils and the amount of social housing overall. Following the Housing Act 1988, many councils transferred ownership of their housing stock to housing associations, and housing associations continued to build more social homes through the 1990s and 2000s. However, a drastic reduction in Government funding since 2010 has seen fewer social and affordable homes built.

In 2010-11, nearly 36,000 social rented homes were started. The following year, after funding cuts, that number reduced to just over 3,000. But it is worse than that. Some 165,000 social homes for rent were either sold or demolished without direct replacement between 2012-13 and 2021-22. That is an average net loss of more than 16,000 desperately needed, genuinely affordable homes a year, meaning that those who cannot afford to buy their own home—that includes pensioners and those living in poverty—are often forced to rent privately and live in constant fear of rent hikes or eviction. It is not just people in poverty who are affected. A generation of young people are struggling to find a home in which they can have some dignity and raise a family.

The Government should be bringing forward an ambitious programme of new social homes built on brownfield sites to high energy efficiency standards. It is also important that existing social housing is maintained to a decent standard. It is a matter of real concern that after almost 13 years of Conservative Government, there are insufficient welfare rights agencies to support tenants when they need help with issues such as damp, mould and disrepair. I know from the casework I receive, as I am sure colleagues across the House do, that there is a desperate need for such support.

It is a matter of extreme concern that the Government have failed to address the crisis in supply of social housing. Successive Conservative Governments have not only singularly failed to build the social homes we need over the past 13 years, but they have actively sought to remove them on an unprecedented scale. We need a sea change in attitudes to social housing and a commitment and a belief that social housing is a social good. Without it, the misery of homelessness and insecure and overpriced accommodation will continue to prevail.