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Labour pledges to change ‘absurd’ affordable rent definition

Labour has promised to change the government’s definition of ‘affordable’ rents, calling it “absurd”.

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Lisa Nandy said an average "affordable" property in Ealing is over £450 a week
Lisa Nandy said an average "affordable" property in Ealing is over £450 a week
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Labour’s @lisanandy said: “We could change this absurd definition of ‘affordability’… that means houses that are currently 80% of market rent” #UKhousing

Answering an audience question about how to solve the housing crisis on Question Time last week, Lisa Nandy, shadow housing secretary, said: “We could change this absurd definition of ‘affordability’.”

“The government will tell you that they’ve put money into affordable housing, but what they won’t tell you is that 90% of that money has gone into affordable, not social, housing. That means houses that are currently at 80% of market rent.”

Ms Nandy said that in the London Borough of Ealing, where she was speaking, an average rental property that is deemed ‘affordable’ is more than £450 a week.


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“I don’t know in whose world that is affordable, but that has got to change,” she said.

Last month, analysis by Inside Housing revealed that affordable rent in England is double the equivalent social rent in some areas, with one-bed properties costing more than £10,000 a year in parts of London.

Four-bedroom affordable rent homes in Hackney cost on average £1,420 per month, while four-bedroom homes for social rent cost less than half that amount, at £705.

Responding to the question “can the government solve the housing crisis affecting young people?”, Ms Nandy laid out Labour’s pledges for housing, which include ending the “deliberate vandalism” of the UK’s council housing stock.

“The crisis is in affordability and we could sort that out tomorrow,” she said. “We could introduce a permanent scheme of state-backed mortgage insurance to help people who make very high rental payments for long periods of time but don’t have deposits to make the leap into homeownership.”

“We could help people right now who are in the private rented sector, which has become the Wild West, by legislating to raise standards in the private rented sector and putting an immediate ban on unfair no-notice evictions.

“We could mend the deliberate vandalism of our council housing stock. We’ve got a million people on social housing waiting lists in this country and we’ve seen our social housing stock depleted year on year on year.”

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