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It is “not fair” to say the government does not care about social housing and tenants, housing minister Alok Sharma has said.
He was speaking during an adjournment debate on social homes for rent, secured by Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse last night.
“Will the government come clean on their plans for social homes?” asked Ms Hobhouse, who represents Bath.
“There is no strategy and there are no policies; rather, they have walked away from their responsibility to the poorest and most vulnerable, handing it all back to cash-strapped local authorities.
“To cover their failure, they conflate social housing with affordable housing and hope that no one will notice. We need to be perfectly clear that affordable housing and social homes for rent are two very different things.”
In response, Mr Sharma said the government had helped deliver more than 357,000 affordable homes since 2010, including around 128,000 for social rent – and pointed to the £2bn additional allocation for the Affordable Homes Programme announced in October.
“I say gently to the honourable lady that it is not fair to say that the government somehow does not care about social housing or the people who live in it,” he said.
He quoted David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, as calling the Affordable Homes Programme “a watershed moment for the nation”.
Mr Orr last week criticised housing measures in the Autumn Budget as “not bold enough”.
And recent official statistics show that the period between April and September saw the lowest number of homes for social rent built with grant funding than any other comparable period on record.
Mr Sharma admitted that “there is more to do” to increase social housing supply, but insisted Budget policies “herald a boost for the building of social homes”.
Ms Hobhouse claimed that low grant levels were causing “social cleansing” at Curo’s regeneration of the Foxhill Estate in her constituency, where 99 social rented homes will be lost as part of the scheme.
But the minister said that together with the housing association’s development at the neighbouring Mulberry Park site there will be a net increase in affordable homes available for the estate’s existing residents.