Labour review advocates key role for councils
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Councils should be placed ‘centre stage’ in the government’s effort to complete its decent homes programme, a senior Labour Party figure has urged.
Jack Dromey, the treasurer of the Labour Party, said the party’s working group on housing has argued that councils should play a key role in ensuring homes are up to a decent standard in a policy document that will be presented to its annual conference.
Party members will vote on whether the document should become party policy at the annual Labour conference, which begins next week. The full document will be published ahead of the event.
Mr Dromey also said councils should be encouraged to develop homes. ‘I want councils to be told not just that you can build, but given the resources to build,’ he said. ‘At the heart of that is being given a level playing field.’
Addressing a Defend Council Housing meeting at the Trades Union Congress, Mr Dromey, who is also deputy general secretary of the union Unite, said the current housing crisis was ‘incapable of resolution’ without the intervention of local and central government.
He said unions including Unite, Unison and the TUC were working together to put pressure on the government on housing issues, including the reform of the housing revenue account.
Heather Wakefield, head of local government at Unison, agreed that councils should be encouraged to build, and called for a ban on giving public land to private developers until a decision is made. ‘There should be a moratorium while there is this review,’ she said.
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