” … The housing and planning bill, now in the Commons, is designed to finish off social renting. It carries out the manifesto pledge of a right to buy housing association properties at heavy discounts. Local authorities have to sell their most valuable homes to pay towards that discount – so two social homes are lost for every one sold.
Council and housing association rents are cut by 1%, which sounds good but the Institute for Fiscal Studies says it helps very few of the 3.9 million social tenants: it just comes off their housing benefit. But it’s a bonus for the Treasury, taking £1.7bn off the housing benefit bill by leaving a disastrous hole in council and housing-association finances: they will build 14,000 fewer homes to rent. Borrowing to build will be harder, as this loss of rent caused Moody’s to downgrade housing associations’ credit ratings. The FT reports that, as a result of the rent cut, council plans to build 5,448 homes were cancelled instantly.
…For every nine social homes sold off, only one has been built. “Get Britain building,” Cameron said, but few expect those million homes he promised. Housing is at the root of all good social policy. Good jobs, better education, decent communities, children at home in secure families – all depend on somewhere permanent and decent to live. Macmillan knew it, yet Cameron has abandoned it.”
East Devon Watch 