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Malthouse calls on social landlords to step up delivery
Housing associations and councils need to increase the delivery of new homes, housing minister Kit Malthouse has said.
Speaking in a backbench debate in the House of Commons on Thursday, Mr Malthouse said that the government has created “an investment environment which supports both councils and housing associations” and that now they should build more homes.
He told parliament: “This government pledged to address overall housing supply in our 2017 housing white paper and our ambition to deliver 300,000 homes a year on average by the mid-2020s was set out in the Autumn Budget 2017.
“The government agrees that affordable housing will play a vital role in meeting this target, which is why we’ve created a stable investment environment for the sector. Now it is time for housing associations and councils to step forward and build more.”
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He pointed out that in the past two years, the government has introduced a CPI plus 1% rent deal for housing associations, promised to provide funding over the next 10 years, increased grant and scrapped the cap on council borrowing to build housing.
Mr Malthouse, who recently dropped out of the race to become the next leader of the Conservative Party, has been housing minister for just over 11 months.
If he survives until the end of June, he will overtake the prime minister’s current chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, to become the longest-serving housing minister since Brandon Lewis, who was in office between 15 July 2014 and 16 July 2016.
Mr Malthouse was speaking in response to heavy criticism of government policy by Labour MPs, of whom Matt Western secured the debate.
Mr Western opened the debate by telling parliament: “Most concerning is that the government has no target for social rented housing. As I said earlier, Shelter’s commission on social housing estimates that 3.1 million homes need to be built in the next 20 years if we are to arrest this crisis.
“That is an average of 155,000 a year, which would cost only £10.7bn per year. Just 6,500 homes were built last year and at that rate, only 130,000 would get built over the next 20 years or just 4%.”
