Labour fails to address party's housing concerns

Labour ministers have been slated for failing to respond to party members' concerns about housing - despite pledges at last year's party conference.

The party rewrote its rule book last year to dodge an embarrassing defeat at its annual conference after admitting housing had caused it 'division after division' (Inside Housing, 28 September).

At a stroke, the changes ended members' ability to draft resolutions that challenge party policy at conference. Members had defeated the government over its housing policy at the previous three conferences.

But in a sop to its critics the party promised their views would feed directly into future policy via a special working group tasked with looking into their concerns.

That move saw the government head off a direct challenge at the conference after rebels agreed not to call for a vote against government policy in exchange for representation on the working group.

One member of a constituency party granted a seat at the table told Inside Housing he was unhappy with the progress.

John Caller, from Gravesham's Labour Group, who proposed a motion at last year's conference calling for a 'fourth option' of investment in council housing, said that 'nothing has come out of those discussions'.

'The government pretty much are going through the motions of doing what they said at conference as regards talking to the little folk like me,' he said. 'Both ministers, since I have been involved [with the group], haven't moved the argument forward. They haven't really listened.'

Mr Caller said he regretted his decision not to push for a vote on housing at last year's conference - instead deferring his motion to the group. 'Give me 10 more goes at it and I would put it to the vote every time,' he said.

'We have deferred it, we have chatted about it and that is it. We could have got that even if we had lost the vote. We could have made as much progress.

'It [the working group] is a talking circle - there is no action from it.'

The party has already put together a plan outlining its future housing plans in broad terms.

The document, seen by Inside Housing, said that it wanted to give councils 'new freedoms to increase social housing supply, including the building of new social housing', mainly through new local housing companies. These have already been announced by ministers.

The paper also states that the party would tackle estates that suffer from 'concentrated pockets of intergenerational poverty and worklessness'.