Think tank calls for tenancy overhaul to tackle overcrowding
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Councils should be given the freedom to offer different types of social tenancy to tackle overcrowding, a local government think tank has warned.
The Local Government Information Unit is calling for a fundamental overhaul of UK social housing policy to deal with overcrowding, which it says is a growing problem in the sector.
In a report prepared for Conservative-run Westminster council it identifies that in 2006/07 there were 25,000 families in severely overcrowded social housing in England, with two or more bedrooms short, and 196,000 who were overcrowded, with one bedroom short. At the same time there were 441,000 homes that were under occupied, with two or more extra bedrooms.
Its recommendations (see below) cover ways to improve the supply of social housing, the allocation of properties, mobility between properties, and the wider support needs of tenants.
Amelia Cookson, head of the LGIU’s Centre for Service Transformation, said: ‘The level of overcrowding should come as a shock – not least because the space is out there, there just isn’t any way to share it around.’
Westminster has set itself a goal of rehousing 1,000 families in overcrowded homes within the next five years. But it argues that current rules on homelessness and the allocation of housing to people with a local connection need to be changed.
The report calls for more weight to be given to housing applications from families with a local connection, but for it to be harder to establish this connection, with the time period extended from six months to two years where necessary.
Philippa Roe, cabinet member for housing at Westminster, said: ‘Overcrowding is one of the biggest issues facing the housing sector and to really tackle it we need broader reform.’
The Local Government Information Unit recommendations
- Tackling overcrowding should be given the highest priority, and this should be reflected in decisions about spending in areas such as health and education, as well as in housing.
- Local authorities need to be given the flexibility to develop means of borrowing off balance sheet.
- New ideas for models of private sector investment in rental housing, which also generate additional social sector units, should be supported and developed to allow local authorities to build more family-sized homes.
- There should be more flexibility in how resources from planning obligations are deployed, to ensure maximum impact for the community.
- There should be more tangible demonstration of the public accountability of local authorities for housing in the area, such as through publishing annual reports on meeting housing need.
- Homelessness legislation should be amended to allow the use of reasonable alternatives in the private sector.
- The rule on establishing a local connection should be reviewed to create a more equitable system which acknowledges local differences.
- Local authorities should be empowered to create a mixed economy of tenure to increase the range of options for families.
- The financial incentives for mobility should be improved, including greater support for tenants who are moving, by all social landlords.
- Consideration of family needs more broadly should become integral to meeting housing need. There should be a family-centred approach to families in housing stress, which considers all their needs, from housing to health, to training and employment.
Related Files
LGIU Room to Move report
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Readers' comments (6)
Dave Hollins | 07/09/2009 11:48 am
What a total travesty this report is. LGIU used to be a respected organisation but I suppose if you take Westminster's money you propagandise Westminster's policies. Westminster has deliberatley refused to provide sufficient large size homes for many years, deliberately and unlawfully sold off hundreds of large social housing units under Porter and has failed to meet its housing obligations for 30 years as a matter of political dogma. Now they try to pass the blame for overcrowding onto the government. How can any thinking person say that one form of housing need - in this case overcrowding - is more important than others, like homelessness and severe medical need? Westminster has long campaigned to reduce the rights of homeless people and still places families in temporary accommodation miles and miles from the borough, far away from support networks and schools. Overcrowing is a huge issue but so are the other issues and you can't trade one against the other. Housing need in all of its forms is extreme in Westminster but largely because of the failure of the Council over decades to build homes for residents on low incomes. LGIU should be ashamed to offer them a fig leaf to cover up their failures.
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Joe Halewood | 07/09/2009 1:48 pm
RTB
Forget the skewed nature of the report as one argument as that will always be contentious.
RTB - this removed one milion plus homes from the social housing supply nationwide, let alone the scandalous extremes Westminster went to.
Dave, i fully agree that this is a blame transference, but is for all councils who fail (politically conveniently) to see the impact RTB has had. Its not just the number of homes sold but the types of them - the same larger properties that this report cries out for.
The only argument i have heard for RTB is that tenants have paid for their houses in rent - that conveniently ignores that home owners pay 3-4 times the amount borrowed for theirs. The RTBers also fail to see that they have taken a national resource designed for the vulnerable away from the even more vulnerable that cant even afford RTB, and for those vulnerable people that come after them.
That principle is a sick and offensive one. By all means provide incentives to move out of social housing or even downgrade as this report suggests but dont fail to comment that the massive shortage of supply is the fault of RTB then try to blame others for that shortage. Westminster trying that argument is doubly offensive given their outrageous past unlawful behaviour.
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ILAG | 08/09/2009 0:48 am
"The RTBers also fail to see that they have taken a national resource designed for the vulnerable away from the even more vulnerable that cant even afford RTB, and for those vulnerable people that come after them."
Well that is a political opinion. Council housing was not "designed for the vulnerable". This patronising claptrap is a tofu eating sandal wearing middle class liberal lefty spin on history. The great boom in council housing that took place after the war was quite rightly designed to house the returning soldiers, workers and their families in decent living conditions and provide a much needed change from the private rented slums that existed before. Allocation was on the basis of merit; whether you had served in the war, were married (no single mums breeding for benefits need apply - the concept had not been invented yet), and were gainfully employed (similarly the concept of breeding generations of useless thugs on permanent benefits had also blissfully not been invented). At that point, the idea of housing the feckless (or "deprived" or "vulnerable" or whatever modish word the liberal lefties wish to deploy now) using State resources just did not exist.
With increasing prosperity, more and more workers wished to own their own homes in order to pass an asset down to their children. The idea of wealth cascading down the generations, something the middle class had always enjoyed, started to take route with the working class. Thatch understood that working class people didn't want to be middle class. They just wanted to be rich. RTB came about as a result of Thatch thinking "what can we do for our people?". "Our people" being the aspirational working class.
George Osbourne said of RTB "Perhaps the single most successful and transforming policy of Margaret Thatcher's Government was the Right to Buy".
And he was right.
In 2007, DCLG said of RTB:
“the Right to Buy Scheme has helped 1.6 million council tenants in England to realise their aspirations to own their homes. In many cases, it has encouraged more affluent tenants to remain in the neighbourhoods they have lived in for many years, helping to create stable, mixed income communities. Most Right to Buy sales are of local authority properties. Since the introduction of RTB, in excess of £46 billion has been received as a result of the sales of local authority dwellings. These funds have been used to repay debt and finance further capital expenditure”.
And they are right.
And you are wrong.
ILAG
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Re: ILAG | 08/09/2009 4:05 pm
Dave and Joe, i must agree with you on your comments of how we have found ourselves in this "mess" and this apparent transfer of blame, although hindsight is a wonderful thing! ILAG it seems that your argument does offer some historical reference to how we found ourselves here but it seems your political orientation rather than common sense may be motivating you. Quoting a current tory on the actions of a previous tory leader is not a particularly balanced response and do you not think his opinion may be a bit bias? As with many things in life it seems there is no definative answer to this problem so to state the previous posts were wrong is both arrogant and itself incorrect. In my opinion RTB has been a mixed bag, although it has helped many to get on the housing ladder many of our RTB tenants find themselves significantly worse off and often struggling with their liabilities and reduced benifits. Re overcrowding this problem cannot be predicted as accuratelyas some may think, with fluctuating demands, the change in the family unit, more single occupants and other social changes, government policy is required to develop to meet these new demographics.
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C Webb | 08/09/2009 4:13 pm
Hi ILAG - you left one bit off of the end
.......... and when the home purchased under right to buy was sold on because the former tenant had been fooled into thinking they could afford the mortgage and were repossessed, the home was snapped up by a private landlord who then let it to those with no investment in the area, or those dependent upon benefits, who apparantly cause so much disruption to the stable communities right to buy is claimed to have created. Further, the use of the proceeds to clear debts and fund tax cuts for the selected few, has left a housing shortage worse than that caused by the war such that rationing means that what housing is left is being rationed according to need, i.e. to those fitting the most vulnerable, who apparantly also cause so much disruption to the flatted developments that are the only areas of social housing left.
For all the reasons you have to support right to buy, you must also be able to see that it has contributed to the very ills you quote on this website. We can not undo history, but would not everyone have been better served if the £46B had been given away for the tenants to buy privately developed housing, or reinvested in new Council stock. Cause and effect can not be separated.
On the article - I received a letter from Dame Shirley's henchmen some years ago in a local authority capacity, offering to pay my authority to take her social(ist) tenants into my area. The proposal by LGIU (may you be ashamed of drinking from the Devil's cup) amounts to the same thing - 'oh dear, we still have some people to get rid of, I know lets move them to more spacious accomodation in other parts of the country (only because it would not be politically acceptable to ship them east in cattle waggons no doubt). Yes there needs to be better use of what little housing is left, but Westminster can not be allowed to continue to avoid there responsibility to their residents by expecting others to clear up their mess. Tackle overcrowding through investment in new housing fit for the 22nd century and funded through the local authorities as well as private developers.
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Joe Halewood | 08/09/2009 6:22 pm
ILAGs history lecture - and lets assume its correct - details the immediate post-war period. Yet for the last 40 years or so - that is far more time than his nostalgic myopia for the time of ventriloquists on the radio - social housing has been used to accommodate the needy / vulnerable - lets define that as those that cant afford to buy.
The 1.6m that thought they could afford to buy with massive incentives chose to do so at the expense of (a) existing more vulnerable people (those that couldnt afford); (b) current and future people as vulnerable or more vulnerable (again defined as not able to buy). This as we know took out most of the 3 and 4 bed properties, the best properties that are now so sorely needed.
The £46b this RTB ( thatcherite bribe anyone?)realised didnt go penny for penny into new build or new houses, most went to central govt coffers (to pay for tax cuts for the highest earners)- and within that most to the principle seller of the family silver (Mrs T) - along with oil. gas, electricity etc. Yet even if the £46bn had gone in £ for £ it still would have reduced supply given it could not have replaced what was sold due to the massive discounts.
Thats not political its basic economic fact.
RTB fostered and promoted the biggest cleavage to stable communities - the im allright Jack and beggar thy neighbour policy that accorded with Thatchers no such thing as society jibe. It created envy on estates and only incentivised those that could afford to buy and not for those that couldnt.
Yet why couldnt the massive financial incentives be used to buty non council houses? ILAG et all could have bought freeholds and away from the feral scum he so despises - surely something he wants yet blames on anything other than RTB - blame transference on his part. And we would have 1.6m more council houses that are so needed which would....you've guessed it make more stable communities far away from myopic mr angry's from islington view.
RTB's perverse incentives only incentivised those that could afford and not those that wanted to own their own property. A huge flaw in principle and theory and did create envy and divided communities leading directly to instability. Westminster is a classic case in point and so what you sow so shall you reap ... unless you can pay so-called independent consultants to blame everyone and anyone else for the mess you created (a waste of public purse!!!)
You think if Westminster got the £37m from their former leader and supermarket heiress that was legally proven to be acting unlawfully they could rehouse more than the 44 overcrowded families they propose to help this year?
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