The former Liberal Democrat councillor for Alperton, Anton Georgiou, drew on his experience in Brent when he addressed the London Liberal Democrat Summer Forum as part of a panel on housing. His address is published here as a guest blog post. Housing is a major national and local issues and other guest posts on the issue are welcomed.
I am a former Councillor in a part of London that has experienced its
fair share of development and building. In my time as a Councillor, I was a
vocal, often lone voice, on the need to prioritise the delivery of genuinely
affordable family homes and for local authorities to focus on increasing their own
Council stock to address ever growing house waiting lists.
The key to tackling the housing crisis in London and nationwide must be to
vastly increase the type of homes our communities require. There must be recognition
that most people who are trapped without a decent home, on housing waiting
lists cannot afford to privately rent and they are not able to buy their own
home. Saturating the market with more of the same, mostly unaffordable,
unattainable properties, is not the answer. I know from personal experience
that taking this line, does put you in direct conflict with the ‘build, build,
build’ brigade, but I strongly believe we must, as a party, develop an approach
that both ensures the delivery of more homes and most importantly what
Londoners actually need – far more genuinely affordable homes and social/
Council properties.
The problem in a nutshell is that ever since damaging policies like
‘Right to Buy’ were introduced, Council and social housing stock across London
has significantly depleted. We having been knocking down and selling off
annually more social homes than we have been building. All governments,
political parties have failed to address the diminishing Council homes stock
problem, which is why we are now in a situation where local authorities are
frankly unable to even begin to reduce the number of people on housing waiting
lists. Every week, thousands of Londoners present at Town Halls, Civic Centres,
across the city, as homeless. They join tens of thousands of Londoners who
sometimes wait upwards of a decade for a suitable Council home to be available
for them to move into. The problem is much the same in other parts of the
country, and whilst we feel it acutely here, given our population, I can tell
you from my time working in temporary accommodation hostels in other parts of
the country – the situation is dire nationwide.
Local authorities are currently spending huge amounts of money on
temporary accommodation, in the case of Brent, BnB’s outside of London, simply
to ensure individuals who have no where to go, do not end up on the street. If
local authorities had been prioritising the building of social homes, as they
should have been for the past 40 years, we may not be in as bad a situation as
we are now.
Some will lead you to believe, that this is a simple supply and demand
problem. Increasing the supply of all tenure types, including leasehold
properties, which should be banned, Shared Ownership units, which simply put are
a scam that should never be classified as ‘affordable housing’, as well as unaffordable
for most, private market tenures, will deal with our current crisis. This could
not be further from the truth.
We will not tackle the housing crisis by continuing the path that
London, the country, has been on since the 1980’s. Things are not getting
better – they are getting much, much worse.
What needs to happen now, is a revolution in Council home building, but
also in ensuring maximum use of existing stock, including bringing empty
properties back into use. It will require bold action, and frankly for us to
think outside of the box and demand much more from national government to make
it happen.
The Chancellors recent announcement of £39 billion to drive an increase
in the number of affordable homes across the country over the next decade,
should be welcomed, but as ever, the devil is in the detail. Detail that has
not been very forthcoming to date. And I fear, like most of this Labour
government’s announcements, when the detail is revealed, things will start to
unravel.
Despite the £39 billion commitment, the government have not set a target
for how many social and Council homes they will build with this money – nor
have they been explicit about the tenure types, they will include as part of
their affordable homes offer. I know from my time in Brent, that often a whole load
of tenure types are lumped together within the ‘affordable offer’ to boost
numbers and falsely project that those in power are meeting their housing targets.
This must not be allowed to continue.
As Liberal Democrats we need to be clear in our resolve that we will
only accept investment in high-quality, permanent Council homes, as the best
use of this money from the Treasury, and indeed any further money that we must
all hope will be identified to ensure the delivery of Council homes at scale.
I was pleased to see Liberal Democrat MPs push for a vote to force the
government to set a far more ambitious target on increasing social homes –
150,000 in this Parliament alone. This is something we also need to be
demanding of every single local authority in London too, as well as from City
Hall.
However, when targets are in place, it is essential that we hold those
in power to account, in delivering them. There is simply no point in having
targets, as most local authorities do, often wedded into Local Plans, that
state private developers must deliver 50% ‘affordable’, which is an ambiguous
term that has never been universally defined, when in the end most Councils let
developers off the hook because of ‘ever increasing costs’ and the ‘financial
viability’ excuse.
We cannot rely on developers alone to tackle this crisis. By their
nature private developers are driven by profit, their interests are not often
the interests of our communities. Therefore, local authorities need to have
greater control when dealing with these profit minded organisations across the
city. However, we can still make use of private developers. One thing I would
want to explore is finding a way of negotiating with private developers to
reduce Community Infrastructure Levy and Section 106 contributions, in exchange
for them delivering additional genuinely affordable units, social homes, at or
under the LHA rate. The concept of CIL is about offsetting the impact of
development, well I see no greater way to payback to the community, than by
potentially increasing the number of homes available in our communities – for
people who desperately need them.
To add, Councils are always glad to collect CIL contributions, but what
I have found from my time in Brent and in accessing the data from other London
authorities, is that many tens of millions are hoarded rather than spent
effectively quickly, as should be the case. I would much prefer to see
developers guaranteeing the delivery of further genuinely affordable units,
over allowing Labour Council’s to hoard money, because frankly, I do not trust
Labour to spend money well.
The money that does currently exist, in Brent for example, over £100 million
in the CIL pot, could and should be unlocked to assist the Council in ramping
up its own Council homes building programme. Council’s need to be given greater
tools and resource to build their own quality stock. The government and City
Hall need to step in to realise this ambition.
I will end by saying this. Every Londoner deserves a decent, safe,
affordable place to call home. This after all is the foundation for all our
lives. Without this foundation, people are massively impacted, one’s ability to
work, to study, to feel secure, it robs our young people of the ability to not
just get by but get on and take full advantage of living in the best city in
the world. This is why we need to be bold and radical in our approach. There
isn’t time to tinker around the edges, and place sticking plasters on this
crisis. We cannot rely on the private market to solve this crisis. It will take
an interventionist approach, and the Liberal Democrats in London must lead the
way on this.
