Council houses under threat
Local authorities fear the first significant council house building programme for more than a decade is under threat from funding cuts.
More than £58 million to fund the construction of 912 council homes has been put on hold pending the 22 June emergency Budget. A total of £100 million has also been cut from the National Affordable Housing Programme.
Councils, some of which were hoping to build their first authority-provided homes in years, now face uncertainty over new projects.
Bristol Council, which has nearly £3 million of funding for 45 new homes on 11 sites on hold, Hull Council (£3.4 million for 57 homes) and Dudley Council (£4.34 million for 81 homes) are among 43 authorities affected.
Waltham Forest Council, in east London, which has a waiting list of 11,000 homes, has had £1.73 million for its first new council homes for
18 years put on hold. The authority hopes to be able to press ahead with plans to build 22 new homes on the site of two disused garages.
Marie Pye, cabinet member for housing in Waltham Forest, is fearful that £28 million from the National Affordable Housing Programme may also be cut.
She said: ‘If you want to regenerate the economy the last thing you cut is social housing.’
Middlesbrough Council has had £1.14 million to fund 20 homes on the site of a former care home put on hold.
Kevin Parkes, director of planning and regeneration, said that despite the funding uncertainty it is not going to halt work on the scheme as a delay could lead to the missing of deadlines agreed with the Homes and Communities Agency.
The council freeze and cuts come on top of the £214 million funding freeze for the HCA’s kickstart programme.
A CLG spokesperson said it had to make difficult choices because of the severe situation surrounding the present state of the public finances.
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Readers' comments (6)
Anonymous | 04/06/2010 9:45 am
Another £154bn to go.
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Anonymous | 04/06/2010 9:58 am
I can see someone's busy with the calculator function on their PC. But this is serious. I don't believe the money would be taken out of the economy if it wasn't necessary. However, if the money isn't there in the first place, schemes either will not happen or will be delayed. Personally I would scrap Trident completely, defer other big, uncommitted projects such as Crossrail and fund new housebuilding, which clearly does have many other positive benefits. The new government is clearly not that way inclined, unfortunately, but this is our democracy in action.
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Anonymous | 04/06/2010 10:25 am
It is worth noting that the grant for the refurb and reprovsion of Traveller Sites has gone as well. I guess this all shows where priorities lie in terms of protecting the most vulnerable and the what the government thinks of local authorites and their role in housing.
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Anonymous | 04/06/2010 10:47 am
The debate of these cuts were exhausted during election but nobody was prepared to tell us what the real state of economy was and how we need to manage the national economy. But, where did all the money go?
My annoyance with all this is that, it is not the public sector that had cause the problem. It is the private sector. I would not have bailed the banks out. This has set a terrible precedent for the future and the banks will go back to its old ways with more confidence in reckless ventures.
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john bull | 04/06/2010 8:15 pm
hi anonymous, it is the public sector that has got us into this mess.
The government has not given the money to the banks it has lent it and when its paid back with interest the government will have made a profit on the loans. I believe the bank of england has already made £8 billion from the quantative easing programme.
The problem is that the government spent £164 billion more than it received last year, in the public sector. Too many highly paid employees too many generous perks and pensions, an extra 500,000 in ten years. Far too generous welfare provisions, far too many schemes and nanny state QANGO's.
In round figures if you receive £436 billion in taxes but spend £600 billion a year you have major problems.
Councils should get out of housing, let the private sector provide it, if its freed of all the endless red tape and regulation. no more capital grants (gifts) no more housing benefit. Let people pay for what they can afford, not what they would like to have.
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Single Aspect | 05/06/2010 3:07 pm
"Councils should get out of housing, let the private sector provide it, if its freed of all the endless red tape and regulation. no more capital grants (gifts) no more housing benefit. Let people pay for what they can afford, not what they would like to have."
You have clearly forgotten that there was a time when councils employed their own architects' departments, and with some success. While it's true that there were mistakes made with concrete estates there were also successes and better use would be made of public money going directly to housing with dividends to shareholders and bonuses to chief executives of private companies.
Endless red tape is what stops private developers building rabbit hutches and shoeboxes without kitchens (or rather I wish it would).
Lastly you appear to have forgotten that one measure of the value of a society is how it treats its poorest and that to some extent was the function that council housing performed, less well now it's true because so much has been sold under RTB and so little built to replace it.
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