‘Ambitious plan’

Unite welcomed the Labour Party’s new housing policy review, which was launched today (April 19) by shadow housing secretary John Healy and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The Housing for the Many green paper outlined a number of policies that put genuinely affordable homes at the centre of a new housing agenda, including a proposal to build 1m affordable homes over the next decade, the majority of which will be for social rent.

In a speech at the launch event today (April 19) Corbyn said a future Labour government would tackle the housing crisis “in two simple steps” — “build enough housing and make sure that housing is affordable to those who need it.”

He slammed the Tory government for its misuse of the term “affordable housing” — at present a home can be considered “affordable” at up to 80 per cent market rent, which in high-cost areas such as London can mean £1,500 a month in rent or nearly half a million pounds on houses for sale.

“We will dismiss the Tories farcical definition of affordable housing for the sham that it is, replacing it with a definition that understands that whether housing is affordable or not depends on how much people earn, not how much speculators have flooded property markets,” Corbyn said.

Labour would apply entirely different affordability measures for different types of homes, including what it will call ‘living rent homes’ which would have rents set at no more than third of average local household incomes.

The party highlighted in the green paper that a home in Manchester let under ‘living rent’ would be £130 cheaper each month than a private flat, and would allow a couple to save £4,700 extra over three years.

Council housebuilding

Corbyn emphasised that the housing crisis is in large part driven by a lack of supply as he outlined how the party would embark on the most ambitious housebuilding programme in generations.

He vowed to put “everything we can into building council capacity so that once again they can build on the scale that’s needed.

“It will mean a new era of social housing, in which councils are once again the major deliverers of social and genuinely affordable housing and set the benchmark for the highest size and environmental standards,” he said.

The party would place local councils at the helm of this programme by restoring their powers to borrow to build; funding local authorities properly with extra help from central government; and transforming the planning system, which would give councils a new duty to deliver affordable homes, among other measures.

A future Labour government would also close the so called ‘viability’ loophole that now allows commercial developers to get away with not building affordable homes that in theory they are required to. Using the loophole, developers now only need to prove that building the affordable homes would drop their profit margins below 20 per cent to be exempt from building cheaper homes.

Research from housing charity Shelter last year found that the use of the viability loophole in 11 local authorities in England contributed to a nearly 80 per cent decline of affordable homes being built.

“We know by now that we cannot rely on arms-length incentives for private housebuilders, building for profit to solve the crisis,” Corbyn said in his speech today. “As they themselves openly acknowledge, it is simply not profitable for them to build houses for the less well-off. We need to do it ourselves.”

Fire safety

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster, Labour asked the survivors to contribute to today’s green paper — shadow housing secretary John Healy noted that the survivors told them that “tenants were victims before the fire” and that they felt they were treated as “second-class citizens in social housing”.

In response, Labour pledged in the green paper that it would make safety the highest priority in its new decent homes programme, as it pledged to revamp fire safety standards and ensure all high rise council and housing association tower blocks are fitted with sprinkler systems. The party will also give new rights to tenants living in affordable housing, such as tenants on boards, a vote in any estate regeneration plans and a new national tenants’ commissioner.

Unite national officer for local government Jim Kennedy, who attended today’s launch, welcomed Labour’s green paper.

“There are a raft of policies in the green paper that we as a union wholeheartedly support,” he said. “Building one million affordable homes over the next two parliaments is just the sort of ambitious programme that we need to ease the housing crisis.

“The focus on both affordability and housebuilding is at the crux of Labour’s policies and will represent a massive reversal from this and the previous Tory government’s approach which has precipitated an unprecedented affordable housing crisis.”

Kennedy said that Unite will be participating in the consultation on the green paper — and he hopes to see more proposals to help close the widening skills gap in building as well as more to support  housebuilding workers themselves.

“Fatalities in housebuilding are on the rise — there needs to be a recognition that the black economy dominates this sector, which means poor and downright dangerous terms and conditions for workers.

“One way that this can be stopped is by local authorities directly employing in-house labour to build these new affordable homes. Local authorities can also offer and support apprenticeships to bridge the widening skills gap in the housebuilding trades.”

Housing – a human right

Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner likewise welcomed Labour’s green paper on housing.

“At the heart of Labour’s housing green paper is the restoration of the idea that decent, safe and affordable housing is not a privilege — it is a human right. Unite welcomes the proposals Labour set out today that we know if implemented will revolutionise affordable housing in this country,” he said.

“The paper supports many of the ideas that we at Unite have been lobbying for for many years, including a serious housebuilding programme with council and social homes given priority; as well as new protections and rights for tenants and, especially in the aftermath of Grenfell, an uncompromising emphasis on safety,” Turner added.

“Labour not only offers bold proposals but the party has backed it up with a detailed plan to deliver on these proposals — if anything, today’s green paper shows that Labour is the only party that can effectively tackle a housing crisis that gets worse each and every year.”