You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Deregulation measures will not build a single house
The government’s determination to reduce local authority influence over stock transfer associations is disappointing when progress on other measures has been so slow, says Lord Roy Kennedy
Last week the House of Lords approved a measure to reduce the influence of local authorities in other private social housing providers.
This is apparently needed so that the Office of National Statistics would be more likely to reclassify the debt in this sector and remove it from the total of public sector debt.
READ MORE
I can see what the government is attempting to do, but at a time of a national housing crisis, when the government talks about our “broken housing market”, it is disappointing that the only measure we see coming forward is one that does not build a single house – one that does not provide a single home to a family in desperate need.
“This is strange from a government that put the Localism Act on the statute book.”
But instead reduces the number of elected councillors that can sit on boards of private social housing providers.
This is strange from a government that put the Localism Act on the statute book. Though to be fair that has probably more to do with the Liberal Democrats, who were their coalition partners at the time.
Deregulation explained in 60 seconds
It is also frustrating that there are a number of measures that the government has repeatedly made noises about supporting, which are at best moving at a snail’s pace through the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).
Look at the following examples. Having agreed to introduce a client money protection scheme on 28 March 2017 which both private sector tenants and landlords want, the DCLG has just embarked on another consultation exercise concluding in mid-December.
Mandatory fire safety checks in private rented sector housing are still not being progressed, despite a government review recommending they are introduced. Instead, more discussions with the sector are to take place.
The ban on letting agents fees is re-announced again and again, the first time in last year’s Budget, and it has only just found its way into a draft bill a year later.
The obsession with planning as the reason for homes not being built, despite 300,000 planning approvals which have not been taken up.
And the failure to lift the borrowing cap to let local authorities build council homes on social rents that would make a significant contribution to the government’s housebuilding target, provide homes at a cheaper rent and get the housing benefit bill down to more manageable levels.
There’s so much to do, so many problems to address to deal with the housing crisis and fix the “broken” housing market, but in the Lords last week we did not see much action to deal with the problems right in front of us.
Lord Roy Kennedy, shadow minister for communities and local government
