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New housing minister: market for ‘private social rent’ should be explored
The housing minister has suggested there is a need to explore the market for “private social rent” in response to a question about boosting social housing supply.
In his first speech since taking office, Kit Malthouse told the Resi Convention 2018 that he wanted to see a “thousand flowers” of different forms of tenure in the housing market.
Asked about whether he wanted to see levels of social housing return to 70,000 social homes being built a year, he said he would like to see an increase in supply.
He noted that the government has allowed local authorities to bid for a collective £1bn of extra borrowing headroom on their Housing Revenue Accounts.
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Mr Malthouse added: “It would be quite interesting to look at if there is a market – whether anybody can stimulate a market – for private social rent.”
The minister did not expand on what he meant by this, but it comes amid a rise in the sector of for-profit providers of social housing.
These include Sage, which is owned by the world’s largest property investor, Blackstone, Legal & General Affordable Homes and a registered provider set up by the huge real estate investment trust British Land.
During Mr Malthouse’s speech, his audience – made up of a mix of developers, housing associations and local authorities – was polled on whether it thought the government will meet its target of delivering 300,000 homes a year by 2025.
After 93% of the audience voted no, Mr Malthouse compared them to Kodak, the camera company which failed to adapt to the growth of digital cameras, and criticised them for “a lack of ambition”.
Revealing more of his priorities, Mr Malthouse’s speech also touched on the selling of public sector land for the building of housing, a process he said he was keen to “re-energise”.
He told the conference: “I’m convening meetings next week with ministerial colleagues... to talk about how we can re-energise that programme, bring forward the land, but also maybe thinking about what incentives we could give to the public sector to bring land forward, beyond just straight disposal, because more often than not that’s where large amounts of affordable housing can be delivered.”
