Tories unveil social housing swap plan
The Conservative Party is to unveil details of a scheme that would allow social tenants to move around the country.
Shadow housing minister Grant Shapps will use a speech at the National Housing Federation to give details of the house swap scheme, which was first mentioned in the party’s housing green paper earlier in the year.
Mr Shapps will announce he is setting up an industry forum to look at the lack of mobility in social housing, and will outline the areas a Conservative government would feel are its key challenges in housing.
He is expected to say: ‘If you are a social tenant, you don’t have the same opportunities as other renters or home owners. The system means that your aspirations are squeezed, your expectations lowered, and your horizons are limited.
‘Today I can announce that a future Conservative government will facilitate a nationwide affordable-house-swap programme. We will introduce an open database connectivity platform to ensure that – for the first time ever – every family in social housing will have the chance to relocate by exchanging their home for another one, anywhere in the country.
‘I’m pleased to be able to announce today that your leaders from the social and affordable housing world have agreed to work with us to find new ways to inject housing mobility into the sector.’
Last week government housing body the Homes and Communities Agency published a report that found social tenants would benefit from a national mobility scheme.
Research carried out to inform the study found out of 4 million social housing households, 680,000 would like to move, and 128,000 would like to relocate to a different part of the country.
The Mobility Matters report concludes that a national scheme could be viable.
Trevor Beattie, director of corporate strategy at the HCA, said: ‘We fully support the recommendations of [the Mobility Matters] report, which challenges us all to improve mobility options for residents, where geographic boundaries become no obstacle.’
Mobility Matters recommendations:
- Random selection of homes to be made available through pilots to avoid only ‘hard to let’ properties being included
- An equalisation process to ensure that over a fixed period all participating landlords would offer the same proportion of flats and family sized houses
- Harmonisation of lettings policies to prevent confusing residents with differences, for example in letting priorities
- A review of information held on under-occupiers to see if incentives and support could encourage them to move to a home better suited to their needs, freeing up much-needed larger properties.
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Readers' comments (12)
Joe Halewood | 09/11/2009 10:36 am
Ah so its not a right to move after all then!
He is expected to say: ‘If you are a social tenant, you don’t have the same opportunities as other renters or home owners. The system means that your aspirations are squeezed, your expectations lowered, and your horizons are limited"
I didnt realise that private renters can just up sticks and leave tomorrow (legally I mean) or that home owners can do the same.
Homeswap? Yes i know it doesnt work and neither will any variant despite having 'open database connectivity' (wow!) So where is the extension of rights? It isnt there is it and this is simply spin - even before the so-called new policy is announced!!!
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kass | 09/11/2009 11:08 am
Well, I thought the priority was for MORE social homes... While making swapping social homes easier can't be a bad thing, it is certainly not going to change the urgent need for more and more new GOOD social homes. I hope the conservatives are not trying to make us believe that easier home swapping is a better alternative than having MORE homes in the first place.
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Melvin Bone | 09/11/2009 11:54 am
'Mr Shapps will announce he is setting up an industry forum to look at the lack of mobility in social housing'
'Setting up a forum'? To 'look' at mobility in social housing...
Is there a general election looming?
It all looks like smoke and mirrors so far.
I await the Governments response that they thought of this first...
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Rob | 09/11/2009 12:02 pm
What a load of rubbish. What we need now is more social housing built, to accomodate the 5 million people who are in desperate need of a secure roof over their head. Deal with the real problem please, not just something that sounds good, and is in actual fact, already happening.
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Ted | 09/11/2009 12:33 pm
There used to BE a national mobility scheme, didn't there? It was called HOMES as I recall. What happened to that, then?
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Ian | 09/11/2009 3:02 pm
the sorry history of mobility schemes is summarised here ; http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/briefings/snsp-04696.pdf
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Tom | 09/11/2009 5:15 pm
Has Mr Shapps not heard of houseexchange or homeswapper? Nearly all tenants already have the "chance" to relocate by exchanging thier home - in fact they already have the "right" to a mutual exchange....provided they can find someone to swap with. This report indicates nothing new at all! The 'Mobility Matters' report is not dealing with the same issues as it looks at making homes available for mobility moves - not the samr thing as an exchange at all.
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Peter | 09/11/2009 5:43 pm
Mr Shapps is a wonderful entertainer. I love all his amazing hare brained schemes that he is proposing on behalf of his party.
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Jim Paton | 10/11/2009 1:46 am
"Every family will have the chance..." Just families, then, not anyone else?
That aside -no they won't. If you live in an area where there is little employment and wish to move to somewhere you might get a job (usually London or the south-east) you've virtually no chance at all.
The "rights" he refers to are already there. The problem with the existing web sites aiming to link people up for mutual exchanges is that they are full of people who don't wish to move to a different part of the country, but need a different home in the area where they already live. That's a problem of insufficient overall supply, not of mobility.
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Linda | 10/11/2009 1:13 pm
Rights to exchange exist already, improvement is always welcome, what about private sector? what about a look at shared owners who part purchased years ago? needing now to downsize, but stuck with same poperty as cannot afford to staircase or buy-out, what about an exchange/swap route for these too?
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