UK

Time to talk about social housing

By Rachel Bentley and Simon McGrath | Tue 26th November 2024

There are around 3.8million homes available for social rent in  England – around 60% are owned by Housing Associations and the rest by Local Authorities.

There is plenty of talk among Lib Dems about the need for more social housing – access to safe, warm and affordable homes is a key part of happy and healthy lives but the reality for many social housing tenants is very far from those ideals. Damp, mould, huge bills to heat draughty homes and bodged repairs are frequent complaints.  Our Councillors and MPs often receive large numbers of complaints from social housing tenants and while it would be nice to think that local authorities gave a more responsive service than Housing Associations, that is very much not the case. The London Borough of Southwark, London’s largest social landlord, has an appalling record of leaving tenants in shocking conditions with the third highest number of Housing Ombudsman complaints in the UK[1].

Given how many people live in social housing, it is surprising how little attention is paid to them. It’s striking for example that in Parliament, despite MPs’ inboxes being full of emails about problems with social housing, there are All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG)  for MPs and Peers interested in everything from AI to Autism and Fisheries to Fusion Energy but those dedicated to social housing appear defunct.

Our 2019 manifesto briefly covered people living in social housing. We said we would:

Protect the rights of social renters by:

Proactively enforcing clear standards for homes that are socially rented, including strict time limits for repairs.

Fully recognising tenant panels so that renters have a voice in landlord governance.

And in our 2024 manifesto, our focus was on building many more homes including 150,000 for social rent each year.

This is a start ,but we believe that we need to develop our policy further on how tenants are treated.   Last year the London Region Conference passed ahttps://drive.google.com/file/d/1fwpYMkvpWf8Ig2oWwIHjgtTpsxvxuzD0/view?emci=8df21df7-3ccf-ee11-85f9-002248223794&emdi=5ce7031f-70cf-ee11-85f9-002248223794&ceid=380135“> motion on A Positive Vision for Social Housing.
(Pages 6-8)

We would like to bring a motion to Federal Conference to develop our policy and would welcome input from our Councillors, activists and members on this. Please send your ideas to: libdemsocialhousing@gmail.com

[1] Southwark has the third highest number of housing Ombudsman complaints in UK – Southwark News

* Rachel is the Deputy Leader of the Lib Dem Group on Southwark Council and Simon is Whip of the Lib Dem Group on Merton Council