ROOF Blog

Housing Minister John Healey and the Local Government Association (LGA) today announced they are launching joint work to look at how councils can deliver new homes to tackle the shortage of affordable housing and help drive economic growth. A new Commission chaired by Lord Richard Best and made up of council chief executives, housing association chief executives and academics, will assess what councils are already achieving and advise on ways councils could play an even greater part helping to build the homes of all types the country needs, as well as extending their strategic housing role to better meet local needs and aspirations. The Commission will report to Government and the LGA in summer 2010.

Housing minister John Healey has announced a boost to house building in England, by confirming nearly £500million funding to build around 8,000 affordable homes across the country. This takes total government funding for house building to £3.5 billion since June. Over 3,000 of these new homes are expected to be available through the government’s HomeBuy schemes, offering first time buyers a helping hand onto the property ladder. And nearly 5,000 homes will be available for affordable rent through housing associations.

The government is expected to announce modest rent reductions for around two million housing association tenants, despite a survey of tenants showing that most are against a rent cut.

The associations – the main providers of social housing – fear that such cuts will lead to a sharp fall in the level of affordable house building because they will be unable to raise the necessary loans for new building.

But ministers are determined to press ahead with the first ever rents cut, despite an opinion poll by the National Housing Federation (NHF), which represents the associations, showing that almost 70 per cent of tenants do not want a reduction.

The NHF says that even a small cut will reduce their income, already well down as a result of the recession, by millions of pounds.

NHF chairman, David Orr, said: ‘Faced with such a shortfall, associations could be forced into cutting back dramatically on the key services tenants really value, such as anti-social behaviour programmes, job training schemes and education initiatives.’