Brown to unveil social housing plan
The government is shifting money from Home Office and transport budgets to pay for more affordable housing.
Prime minister Gordon Brown will announce details of his plans this afternoon, in a statement to Parliament. The initiatives will include moves to build more social homes and prioritise local people when allocating stock, the Communities and Local Government department said.
Business secretary Lord Mandelson told the BBC: ‘He will be announcing a major boost in the provision of social and affordable housing over the next two years.
‘That reflects a switch in spending, both within the relevant department, but also between the Home Office and the Department for Transport and the other department.’
The housing plans will be part of a wider policy document, Building Britain’s Future, which will set out the Labour government’s legislative programme in the run up to the general election.
Details are rumoured to include a £500 million shift in funding to prioritise the building of affordable homes. Councils will also place more emphasis on applicants’ links to the local area and time spent on waiting lists when allocating social housing, rather than assessing applications purely on need.
This is being portrayed as a populist move designed to appeal to core Labour voters, and undermine support for far right parties such as the British National Party.
Housing minister John Healey will announce the measures with Mr Brown this afternoon, which will also include more freedom for social tenants to move house and measures to tackle fraudulent sub-letting of homes.
‘We need to free up the system, so councils can do more to help those who have spent a long time on waiting lists or those with strong family connections,’ Mr Healey is expected to say.
‘We want a fair system where council housing gives more young people a good start in life and improves people’s prospects of getting a job.’
More funding may also be announced for the government’s Homebuy direct scheme, which helps first-time buyers onto the housing ladder and has been oversubscribed.
Have your say
You must sign in to make a comment
Readers' comments (5)
allocations manager | 29/06/2009 10:09 am
I hope there's more substance to Gordon's paper than the allocating properties to people with links to the to the local area as this will result in less diversity (Section 106s??) - and will play right into the hands of far right parties such as the BNP!!!
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
N Hamilton | 29/06/2009 1:08 pm
While it is premature to get into too invoved a debate before the anouncement is made, allocations manager is surely wrong to say that giving more priority to people with local links is disciminatory. To say this implies that no BME or other minority groups have local links, which ignores the actual diversity of people born, or long term resident and involved in, our communities. It is cariacturing anyone non-white, non-hetero, non-middle aged as an outsider that plays into BNP hands.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
kim | 29/06/2009 6:01 pm
What we need is less time waiting for homes... people WITH priority need EG overcrowded familys living in 1bed flats!! certainly thats more important than people who ARE in the right type of home they need. If PEOPLE WANT TO MOVE TO ANOTHER AREA TO BE CLOSER TO THEIR FAMILIES THEN THEY SHOULD DO MORE PROMOTING OF MUTUAL EXCHANGES! sorry if ive got it completely wrong but being part of a family of 4 in a small 1bed flat waiting almost 2years and STILL waiting for any 3bed to come up is really unbearable. And even a Drs note doesnt help!
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
| 29/06/2009 11:19 pm
It is precisely the attitude of this "allocations manager" (who presumably is one) that drives the incumbent population of this country towards the far Right. Clearly a confirmed middle class liberal lefty hand-wringer who is determined to socially engineer their housing patch using this ludicrous, divisive and discriminatory (to the incumbent population) "diversity" agenda. An agenda which has never been put to the vote and has mushroomed to create an industry of high paying public sector non-jobs (such as "diversity advisers") which will hopefully be the first to get axed once the Tories get in. Or until a real Labour government that actually represents the interests of the people who created the party in the first place is elected. Brown's move is actually a masterstroke which, after so many gaffs, is to be welcomed. The policy is probably the most sensible thing announced by this Government in recent years. Bravo.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
hugh donaldson | 30/06/2009 9:44 am
ILAG
Well I just wonder how much of the wunderkinder Mandelson is in the policy.
Agree this is good news and the local connection is a worthwhile boost to restoring interest and believe in social housing which can deliver so much more by stabilising the "mobiles" and driving the economy from within - not some airhead drivel about constantly changing entrepeneurship faff.
Allocations Manager ? time to roll the sleeves and find out who is really disadvantaged within our society methinks.
Rgds Uisdean
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment