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Shelter’s social housing commission has called for more than three million new social homes over the next 20 years in its landmark final report.
In its final report, the housing charity’s independent panel of commissioners, which includes ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband and two former Conservative ministers, said this figure matches the number of households who will be failed by the housing market in that time.
It takes account of 1.7 million projected “trapped renters” – younger families who cannot afford to buy – and 690,000 older private renters struggling with insecurity of tenure and high housing costs.
They also called for a new Ofsted-style consumer regulator working across social and private rented housing, as well as a new national tenants’ organisation or union.
The commission was launched as a response to the Grenfell Tower fire and counts Edward Daffarn, a survivor of the fire and member of the Grenfell United group, among its membership.
After gathering views from 31,000 people – a quarter of whom were social housing tenants – the commission found that “by a very long way, most people thought the biggest issue facing social housing is that there is not enough of it”.
The vast majority of social tenants (85%) said they were happy with their homes, and 77% said they felt “fortunate” to live in social housing.
However, only 19% felt able to influence their landlord’s decisions about their homes, while just 11% reported feeling capable of influencing national and local government decisions about their homes and communities.
The call for a new regulator comes after Grenfell United last week demanded that ministers overhaul social housing regulation by splitting the body into two arms, with one for consumer issues and one for economic affairs.
Analysis carried out for the commission by research consultancy Capital Economics suggested building the 3.1 million social homes would cost £10.7bn a year – but that two-thirds of this would be clawed back through housing benefit savings and extra tax revenue.
And researchers said the programme would pay for itself after 39 years, while existing products such as Help to Buy are less cost effective.
The commission also insisted that building more social housing “is the only credible hope that government has of reaching its target of 300,000 new homes a year”.
Conservative peer Baroness Warsi, who served in David Cameron’s cabinet, said: “We simply cannot afford not to act.
“The government’s budget for capital expenditure is £62bn a year – our housebuilding programme would cost only a fraction and is well within its financial reach.
“With current spending on housing benefit shockingly inefficient, it’s not hard to see what an investment in bricks and mortar could do to help solve the housing crisis and boost our economy.”
Mr Miliband said: “The time for the government to act is now. We have never felt so divided as a nation, but building social homes is priority for people right across our country.
“This is a moment for political boldness on social housing investment that we have not seen for a generation.
“It is the way to restore hope, build strong communities and fix the broken housing market so that we meet both the needs and the aspirations of millions of people.”
The commission’s 23 recommendations will be presented to Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn today.
“This is a landmark report from Shelter and we are encouraged by the overwhelming public support for social housing they have uncovered,” said Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation.
“The report also calls for a rebalancing of the relationship between housing associations and their tenants.
“We support this ambition and have been working with our members and tenants to ensure that housing associations are among the most trusted, accountable and responsive organisations in the country.”
Sinead Butters, chief executive of Aspire Housing and chair of Placeshapers, said: “We want the regulator to regulate consumer standards as robustly as economic and governance standards – they are intrinsically linked.
“We worry that splitting the regulator in two wouldn’t help drive up standards, and would create unnecessary bureaucracy.
“This has to be the moment when all parties agree – more resource and stability for regulator, new or strengthened standards and proactive enforcement, not just relying on the serious detriment test.”
Communities Secretary James Brokenshire said: “Providing quality and fair social housing is a priority for this government and our Social Housing Green Paper seeks to ensure it can both support social mobility and be a stable base that supports people when they need it.
“We’ve asked tenants across the country for their views and the thousands of responses we’ve received will help us design the future of social housing.”
Update: at 9.40am 08/01/19 a comment from Mr Brokenshire was added to the story.
Complaints and regulation
Tenant voice and involvement
Reforming private renting
Building more social homes