Housing secretary urges councils to opt for strategic partnerships in SAHP bids

He also revealed his department will be investing “even more” in skills over the next three years, following a £17m funding boost to add capacity to local authorities.

Inside Housing has asked the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) for the exact amount of extra funding this refers to.

His comments echo those of Shahi Islam, director of affordable housing at Homes England, in an interview with Inside Housing last autumn.

Mr Islam said the organisation is “looking to hopefully entice more councils to become strategic partners” as under the previous scheme no councils opted for this, though 90 worked with Homes England through a different route.

As well as commenting on development, Mr Reed hinted at further changes to council housing policy.

He told attendees: “We are protecting existing stocks by returning Right to Buy discounts to their 2012 levels, and will bring forward further reforms when parliamentary time allows.

“We are committed to the principle of council housing, not just because it is integral to fixing the housing crisis, but because it gives families security, safety and the ability to plan for the future.”

He said: “I support people’s aspiration to own their own home, but Right to Buy was a political attempt by the Conservatives to undermine council housing and re-engineer communities, by refusing to build more social homes to replace those that were sold off.

“And it brought new construction to a halt. It was a disaster. Councils’ ability to build new council housing never recovered.”

He stressed that the current government are “determined to get Britain building council housing again”.

But at a Q&A panel session after Mr Reed’s video message, a representative from homelessness charity Shelter pointed out that the government has not set an overall target for social housing.

He said: “Surely if you set an overall target it’s a practical objective, and then you can put the policy in place that delivers against that, against housing figures.

“So [I’m] just wondering why, since the election, the government has been so reluctant to do that?”

In response, Becky Perks, deputy director of local authority housing at MHCLG, pointed to the government’s overall target for the SAHP but said it is “really challenging” to set a target.

“And [MHCLG] has said, there’s so much divergence in terms of grant rates and kind of what support is needed in different areas,” she added.

“We absolutely need to see what comes into the SAHP in terms of bids for the answer to the target around what we’re going to bring through that programme.”

She added that extra flexibility for how councils can spend Right to Buy receipts – and how much of this money they keep – will enable more delivery by local authorities, but added that there is more work to do to see how this plays out in practice.