First, Alistair Darling’s pledge to cap local authority rent increases at 3.1 per cent. On the face of it, this move is good for council tenants (who won’t see massive rent hikes from cash-strapped local authorities). And for landlords (which now at least know this income stream will significantly exceed the rate of inflation and will avoid repeating the fiasco of earlier this year when rent notices had to be issued twice).

There are two problems, however. This 3.1 per cent cap is in stark contrast to the 0.9 per cent cut that the average housing association tenant will receive, which does nothing for the ideal of a more equal social housing ‘domain’. Plus, the Communities and Local Government department must underwrite some of a predicted loss in rental income which had originally been capped at 6.1 per cent. This is said by Whitehall sources to run into ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’ and will have to come from somewhere.

Second, why is the government so keen to bend over backwards to help house builders? The aim of ensuring they can build more homes by overhauling the unwieldy planning gain system is to be lauded. However, before the recession, Section 106 agreements delivered the lion’s share of social housing. No one would argue that we should return to a situation where social landlords are so dependent on the private sector for new homes - the growing role of councils as equity investors through land should see to that. Yet Section 106 deals and contributions from the community infrastructure levy will still have a big role to play in social housing provision at the end of the recession. Officials should bear this in mind.

Third, the £500 million savings that the chancellor wants the CLG to make will hit regeneration projects hard. It is true that many large projects have ground to a halt and that public funding won’t be enough to kick-start them in most cases. However, Mr Darling could have taken this opportunity to throw councils a bone and back the concept of ‘tax increment financing’ - allowing councils to borrow against future revenues.

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