The Tories Have an Ideological Resistance to Social Housing

It wasn’t always so. Harold MacMillan, Tory prime minister from 1957 to 1963, and Minister for Housing and Local Government from 1951 to 1954, where he kept his promise to oversee the building of 300,000 council houses per year, is proof. This was no mean feat in post-world war two Britain, which was pretty much bankrupt after the cost of the war.

MacMillan gave permission for as many ‘subsidised local authority houses’ to be built as there were applications for. Councils were allowed to borrow at very cheap rates in order to build houses which would in time pay for themselves through rents. At the time many working class people lived in low quality, ‘slums,’ which were owned by private landlords, and where often several families lived in one room.

Compare this with the actions rather than words of the current Tory government, for example, that building more houses is part of the prime minister’s Theresa May’s ‘personal mission.’

Daniel Bentley of the think-tank Civitas pointed out in a recent pamphlet, The Land Question, where he cites research by Savills that 80 per cent of new homes built in London are affordable to just eight per cent of households. Neither is the quantity near enough, with the city’s household growth averaging 55,000 a year, and expected to remain that way for the next quarter century at least, and with just 30,000 homes built in 2015/6.

But not only are not enough new affordable homes being built, existing social housing is being demolished and replaced by homes for sale or expensive rent, often by Labour run councils, and of course with a Labour Mayor of London. Research published by Green London Assembly member and newly elected party co-leader Sian Berry this week found 4,142 council homes have been lost following housing redevelopments since 2003. 

The root cause of this outcome is that central government (both Tory and Labour) will (would) not allow local authorities to borrow to build social housing. Allied to the government’s refusal to end the ‘right to buy’ for social housing tenants, has led to a shortage of social housing.

Furthermore, planning permission is in place for regeneration schemes that would lead to the loss of a further 7,612 social rented homes in the coming years in London.

Ms Berry said: ‘These figures show that there are choices boroughs have made in the past and for the future that lead to very different outcomes for the loss or gain of social housing in their areas when estate plans are made.

‘The very least that should be achieved when a council estate is in need of work is the net gain of council homes.’

A Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) report in March this year found that the clearing of estates in preparation for rebuilding accounted for some of the 3,000 local authority units demolished each year.

According to the CIH, the gain in different categories of homes from regeneration projects was ‘impossible to identify in statistics,’ but ‘one outcome is likely to be a further loss of social rented homes’.

The Government’s social housing Green Paper reaffirms its faith in the existing Estate Regeneration National Strategy, adding: ‘We will work with public, private and community sector partners to better understand how public and private investment can lead to improved social and economic outcomes for the existing community.’

In the real world, more than 4,700 people were recorded as sleeping rough in England on any given night in autumn last year, a figure that has more than doubled since 2010, when the Tories came to power. From my observations in London, this official figure is likely to be well below the true numbers who are rough sleeping, but it is not always easy to quantify.

Why will the present Tory government not follow MacMillan’s lead and allow councils to borrow to build social housing, which worked before impressively, rather than stick with its current failing policy? The answer is ideology, where the market always knows best, with only a peripheral role for government, central and local. There is also a party political reason, because the Tories believe that building council houses, just creates Labour voters.

It didn’t stop the Tories winning elections in the 1950s though, with many working class people grateful for a decent, affordable home to live in. I can’t see them changing now though.