Thousands of council properties standing empty should be brought up to scratch - Jayne Dowle

Angela Rayner is promising a ‘council housing revolution’ when she receives an expected £1bn investment to build thousands of new homes for social rent in next week’s Budget.

Deputy prime minister and housing secretary Rayner has put together a good case, arguing that council housing is vital to hitting Labour’s much-trumpeted target of building 1.5 million homes. The money, to be released over the next 18 months, is being seen as a down-payment on far bigger sums in next spring’s spending review.

In total, 22,023 social (including council and housing association) homes were either sold or demolished last year in England, yet just 9,561 social homes were built – a net loss of 12,462 homes, according to research in February by housing charity Crisis.

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“It’s disgraceful to see the number of social homes continue to be decimated,” said Crisis chief executive Matt Downie, in response to the findings. “This is robbing over a million households stuck on council waiting lists of the opportunity of a safe home.”

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner arrives in Downing Street, London, for a Cabinet meeting. PIC: Jeff Moore/PA WireDeputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner arrives in Downing Street, London, for a Cabinet meeting. PIC: Jeff Moore/PA Wire
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner arrives in Downing Street, London, for a Cabinet meeting. PIC: Jeff Moore/PA Wire

Rayner is pledging to build enough council homes to stop this loss by April 2026. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has agreed a top-up to her budget of between £500m and £1bn.

Before building new, wouldn’t it make sense for Rayner to take a long, considered look at the thousands of council properties standing empty in existing communities that could be brought up to scratch?

The number of social housing properties lying vacant has increased by more than 50 per cent over five years as waiting lists grow ever longer.

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There are now nearly 70,000 council and housing association properties left unoccupied, up from 46,000 in 2018, according to government data.

At present there are 1.3 million households on waiting lists for social housing and more than 150,000 children living in temporary accommodation, the highest number since records began in 2004.

This is definitely one thing that this government can blame the Tories for, but a good number of these homes could be brought back to life.

Ministers argue rightly that more decent homes would help reduce the burden on the NHS and the benefits bill. Not only do streets and blocks of decent homes provide safe places where people can live healthy lives, they also contribute to stronger communities, with less anti-social behaviour. The truth is, thousands of these homes are already staring ministers in the face.

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Rayner herself has form with council houses, having got into a mighty hoo-ha over the past sale of her own council property which surfaced during the General Election campaign. She is well-placed to understand the emotive arguments that underpin the provision of houses by the state.

‘Council houses’ is handy shorthand, but the truth is, in recent history, very few local councils outside London are committed to programmes adding significant numbers. Sheffield is an exception; according to a recent report by industry publication Inside Housing, the South Yorkshire city completed 426 council-built houses in the year 2022-23.

This places Sheffield in the top three locations for recent council house building in England, after Westminster in central London (549) and Barking and Dagenham in Essex (480).

During the height of council house building, in the 1950s, councils built on average around 147,000 homes a year, says the Local Government Association. In the past 10 years councils have averaged building around 1,400 homes a year. Under the Conservatives, planning difficulties and lack of funding stood in the way.

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It's tempting to plug the nostalgia by turning back the clock to those halcyon 1950s days and even further, to the Addison Act, brought in after the end of the First World War to build thousands of ‘homes fit for heroes’, who returned to slums.

Back then, council house building came typically under the remit of the Town Clerk, who would oversee teams of architects, surveyors, engineers, bricklayers, plumbers, electricians and so on. This structure has largely disappeared and there’s a huge and well-publicised shortage of trades. Those who can build will take the higher wages offered by private housebuilders if they can.

The target of 2026 is barely two years away; it will take time for all of the above to be addressed and tackled with credible plans.

An imaginative approach is called for which takes into account not only the many thousands of existing empty council homes, but the skills deficit and the way in which ‘social housing’ is now run.

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