COUNCIL AND SOCIAL TENANTS: Access to Social Housing
Labour Manifesto 2017:
Under the Conservatives, affordable housebuilding has fallen to a 24-year low. Labour will build the genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy that the country needs.
We will remove government restrictions that stop councils building homes and begin the biggest council building programme for at least 30 years. We will ditch the Conservatives’ ban on long-term council tenancies to give council tenants security in their homes.
We want more people to have a secure tenancy in a home built to high standards.
Labour will scrap the punitive bedroom tax, which has caused many people to be evicted from their home and their community.
More council homes have been sold off under the Conservatives and only one in five have been replaced, despite long housing waiting lists. Labour will suspend the right-to-buy policy to protect affordable homes for local people, with councils only able to resume sales if they can prove they have a plan to replace homes sold like-for-like.
Access to Social Housing
- Setting up a National Investment Bank to support new build housing projects initiated by councils and developers.
- Lifting the borrowing cap in the Housing Revenue Account, enabling local authorities to borrow unto the prudential limits and build more houses.
- Introducing regional home building targets to ensure homes are build in every area to ensure rural areas as well as urban areas benefit from new council homes.
- Introducing a Land Value Tax on underdeveloped land that has planning permission.
- Introducing ‘use it or lose it’ measures on brownfield sites to discourage land banking.
- Allowing councils the right to compulsorily purchase (CPO) sites that are not being developed at a fair value.
- Protecting social housing stock owned by local councils by cancelling right-to-buy scheme.
