Labour pledges to boost supply of truly affordable homes
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Version 0 of 1. Labour has stepped up its bid to win votes from victims of the housing crisis with a pledge to end secret deals between councils and private developers that allow developers to “use smoke and mirrors” to avoid building affordable homes. Housing companies will be forced to make public the balance sheets they use to claim they will not make enough money if they build too many affordable homes. Emma Reynolds, the shadow housing minister, said Labour would also change the definition of affordability to drive down rents on social housing built as part of private complexes. Instead of “affordable homes” being classed as anything up to 80% of market rent, a definition described by critics as Orwellian, rents would be linked to average wages or house prices. Labour is also planning to abolish developers’ right to appeal to the planning inspectorate if they are not happy with the level of affordable housing demanded on a particular site. Related: The young homeless people's election manifesto – in pictures Reynolds admitted the party has not yet worked out how much cheaper affordable housing it would build and conceded the last Labour government had a “mixed record” on building cheaper housing and “should have done more”. Between 1999 and 2004, Labour created fewer than 40,000 additional affordable homes a year in England, less than during the coalition government. But the coalition’s own output fell almost 30% from 2010/11 to 42,870 in 2013/14. Miliband announced on Sunday increases in private rents would be capped at the level of inflation and Reynolds has been dispatched to marginal constituencies with high numbers of renters in a bid to win votes among young voters and their parents. “We want to look at going back to making affordability relative to incomes and house prices rather than market rent,” Reynolds said. “In some parts of the country 80% of market rent is simply unaffordable for people on low incomes or the most vulnerable. In London, Oxford, Cambridge, Brighton, there has been an increase in rent that far outstrips inflation. The coalition has totally skewed the definition of affordable.” Related: Housing policies in the general election – what do the experts think? Brandon Lewis, the Conservative housing minister, hit back at the plans. “Changing the definitions of affordable housing could backfire in their face, by abolishing shared ownership or cutting the number of new affordable homes,” he said. “Labour’s policies actually would undermine affordable housing, not help it.” He added it did not make sense for Labour to “demand the abolition of the right of appeal on one hand and vow to protect human rights laws on the other”. The Conservatives “in principle” agree with Labour’s plan to make developers publish their project balance sheets to tackle concerns over councils being forced to accept that developments could not be profitable unless they have minimal affordable housing contributions. Developers’ financial viability assessments are currently only shown to council officers and not elected members or the public. But Melanie Leech, chief executive of the British Property Federation, said: “Good developers already work as closely as they can with local communities and are as transparent as they can be with the information that they provide. Forcing them to go beyond this is likely to mean that less development takes place and that fewer rather than more homes of all kinds are built.” She added: “The definition of what constitutes ‘affordable housing’ is decision for politicians. They should be aware however that making affordable homes more expensive to produce will reduce the number that can be provided.” |