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Rent must be pinned to local incomes, housing associations tell Burnham

Affordable rent levels must be pinned to local incomes in different parts of Greater Manchester, housing providers have told Andy Burnham, the metro mayor.

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Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester (picture: Getty)
Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester (picture: Getty)
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Affordable rent levels must be pinned to local incomes, Greater Manchester housing providers have told Andy Burnham #ukhousing

Speaking to Inside Housing, Jon Lord, chair of Greater Manchester Housing Providers and chief executive of Bolton at Home, which represents housing associations in the region, said this should be included in the mayor’s definition of affordable housing.

Mr Lord was responding to last week’s launch of the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework, which set a new target to deliver 50,000 affordable homes over the next 30 years.

The framework, which Mr Lord described as “a really good start”, said that 30,000 of these would be for social or affordable rent but did not define what it believed an affordable level of rent is.


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Nationally, the government defines affordable rent as 80% of local market rates. In London, however, mayor Sadiq Khan has refused to fund housing at that rate and has instead defined affordable housing at lower levels.

One of the tenures introduced by the London mayor is ‘London Living Rent’, which is set at a third of local incomes.

Mr Lord suggested that a similar approach would be appropriate in Greater Manchester, telling Inside Housing: “The key thing is affordability, linked to the incomes of people in that locality. Of course, there needs to be some aspirational housing, but there also needs to be some housing that’s realistically pinned to the wages that the local economy is paying.

“A spurious number plucked from the air doesn’t mean anything if it’s not linked to local wage levels. There’s a big difference between the south part of Manchester and the north part of Manchester, for example. We need to take into account all those sorts of things.”

In the coming months, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority plans to release a housing strategy, which will include a Greater Manchester definition of affordable housing. Mr Lord said he is involved in talks about that strategy at the moment.

It will likely expand further on Mr Burnham’s plan to focus new housebuilding in the towns of Greater Manchester and on brownfield land.

The framework released last week advocated this, as well as reducing the planned net loss of green belt by more than half, compared to the previous draft of the framework.

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