Southwark Council commissioned a report on England's council housing and are leading on a campaign to secure the future of council housing.
Cannock Chase Council are signed up as one of the 112 councils now backing the campaign.
The report aims to help the Government ensure that councils can provide more, and better, publicly owned housing.
The report sets out a plan to renew our country’s council housing over the next decade and critical policy changes for the realisation of the Government’s social housing ambitions.
The Context
The report says that England’s council housing system is broken and its future is in danger. An unsustainable financial model and erratic national policy changes have squeezed budgets and sent costs soaring.
Unless something is done soon, most council landlords will struggle to:
• maintain their existing homes adequately
• meet the new demands to improve them
• build new homes for social rent.
Across the country development projects are being cancelled and delayed. This has huge implications for the local construction sector, jobs and housing market.
The reality is that some councils may have no option but to sell more of their existing stock to finance investment in an ever-shrinking portfolio of council homes
The Recommendations
The report offers five solutions and more than 20 recommendations, from over 100 council landlords, responsible for 1.2 million homes.
The five solutions set out detailed and practical recommendations to the Government and include:
1. A new fair and sustainable Housing Revenue Account (HRA) model.
2. Reforms to unsustainable Right to Buy policies.
3. Removing red tape on existing funding.
4. A new, long-term Green & Decent Homes Programme.
5. Urgent action to restart stalled building projects, avoiding the loss of construction sector capacity and a market downturn.