The Housing and Planning Bill

Doug Thorpe of Haringey Left Unity writes.

The Tories’ Housing and Planning Bill currently going through Parliament has nothing to do with solving the housing crisis. It is an act of class war against social housing, and in support of their cronies in the private housing development market.

With The Housing Act 1980, Margaret Thatcher’s government launched an attack on Council Housing by legislating to give Council Tenants the Right to Buy, whilst restricting local councils from spend the receipts from those sales on building new Council Homes, and controls on local authority borrowing. This led to a massive loss of council housing. Before the Right to Buy in 1980 Social Housing accounted for 33% of housing in the UK. By 2012 this had fallen to 17.6%. Since then no government including Labour Governments has tried to reverse this process. The Labour Party formally dropped its opposition to the Right to Buy in 1985.

When combined with state subsidies to landlords through Housing Benefit, mortgage subsidies, and removal of rent controls these policies have fuelled speculation in housing as a commodity and the housing crisis we have today.

Having been out of power (as a single party of government) for decades, the current Tory Government is making up for lost time and driving forward an ideological plan to destroy Council Housing completely.

The Bill is currently in the House of Lords and will almost certainly be law within a couple of months. Among the policies in the Bill are measures to:

• Replace the obligation to build homes for social rent with a duty to build discounted ‘starter homes’ for sale capped at £450,000 in Greater London and £250,000 (to first time buyers under 40) across the rest of England, in effect offering state subsidies for private investors, who may then sell their assets at full market value within five years of their purchase.

• Extend the Right to Buy on a voluntary basis to housing associations, effectively overseeing the further decline in the number of homes for social rent.

• Compel local authorities to sell ‘high value’ housing, thereby exploiting London’s exaggerated property values either to transfer public housing into private hands or to free up its coveted land for property developers. There will be no exemptions ie for specially modified homes.

• Local Authorities will be levied to pay for these discounts regardless of whether they have sold their ‘high value’ properties. Civil Servants will calculate how much they expect each Council to raise through High Value sales, and levy a charge to that amount whether or not houses are actually sold. The Secretary of State will define what is meant by High Value.

• Force so-called ‘high income’ tenants with a total household income over £30,000 in England and £40,000 in London to pay market rents, targeting low-paid working families, those on the minimum wage or claiming disability allowances who cannot afford either to Pay to Stay in their existing homes. For Councils the receipts will go to the treasury. This will be voluntary for Housing Associations but they will be allowed to keep the receipts as an incentive to implement it. Social Landlords will be able to apply to HMRC to get information about tenants’ income.

• Housing Association rents will be cut by 1% (unless tenants are hit by Pay to Stay).

• Grant planning permission in principle for housing estates designated as such to be redeveloped as ‘brownfield land’. In Principle Planning permission will automatically be granted for demolition and redevelopment, and local planners won’t be able to demand more than technical conditions. David Cameron has recently gone to press to spell out the Tories plans to demolish 100 council estates, like Broadwater Farm in Haringey.

• Phase out secure tenancies and their succession to children and replace them with 2-5 year tenancies, after which tenants will have to reapply. This will apply not only to new tenants, but also existing tenants who apply for a move; whether women fleeing domestic violence, families needing larger homes, or people wanting to downsize to avoid the Bedroom Tax. These tenants will be faced with a choice of staying in unsuitable or dangerous housing, or losing their security of tenure.

• Travellers will be redefined for housing purposes to exclude many travelling families from housing assistance and changing planning rules to reduce permanent sites.

These measures are designed to transfer resources to the private sector and destroy established working class communities. They will further fuel housing prices, and property speculation and do nothing for private renters or homeless people, including the thousands on Council waiting lists or in sub-standard “temporary” accommodation waiting for housing. Increasingly the working class and young people are being forced out of Inner London. ‘Generation Rent’ is becoming ‘Generation Went’. While in other areas of the Country there is a failure to invest in maintaining and renewing the existing housing stock.

There may be some scope for lobbying the House of Lords to amend the Bill, particularly over measures like the ending of secure tenancies that were not in the Conservatives’ Manifesto. There may also be scope for legal challenges by Local Councils to being levied from public funds to subsidise Housing Associations (effectively private companies) for their losses through the Right to Buy. All avenues to amend or delay the Bill should be explored. But we cannot rely on these. We must build a mass united campaign against the Bill on Council estates, among the homeless, and amongst all those affected by the housing crisis. It is a direct consequence of the erosion of Council housing that private house prices and rents have skyrocketed.

For the moment the focus of the campaign can still be to defeat the Bill. Defend Council Housing has initiated the “Kill the Housing Bill – Secure Homes for All” to this end. The campaign supported by a broad range of housing campaigns, tenants organisations, trade union branches and political organisations (including Left Unity) has agreed a number of initiatives, including:
• Lobbying the Lords (particularly independent Lords)
• an online petition
• a weekend of action on 13/14 February
• A national Demonstration in March (date to be confirmed but probably 12 March in London)

Facebook Page Kill the Housing Bill – Secure Homes for All

There is also a March against the Housing Bill called by South London housing activists on 30 January (assemble 12 pm Imperial War Museum – SE1 6HZ).

But the campaign must prepare to continue even if (as is likely) the Bill becomes law; with a mass campaign of resistance and direct action to make it unworkable. This must include a call for non-compliance by Labour Local Councils. In recent years Labour Local Authorities have been complicit in many areas with plans to demolish Council estates, fostering the idea that these communities are not diverse enough, and that housing development needs to be higher density (goodbye to the thought of communal spaces or gardens!). Turning development over to Housing Associations and private developers. This capitulation to the market needs to be reversed. Corbyn and McDonnell have met housing campaigns and committed themselves to defending and extending Council Housing. We need to demand Labour Councillors follow their example.

So, while it makes sense now, while facing this particularly dangerous piece of legislation, to focus on defeating the Housing and Planning Bill, in the longer term a national housing movement needs to be built, linking all those affected by the housing crisis, raising demands for rent controls, secure private tenancies, land and planning reform, rights for travelling communities, and for a massive program of building new public housing under democratic control.