We have commissioned a report on England's council housing (PDF, 4.1mb). The report aims to help ensure that councils can provide more, and better, publicly owned housing.
Our report:
- offers five solutions and more than 20 recommendations
- is signed by more than 100 councils, responsible for 1.2 million homes
The context
England’s council housing system is broken and its future is in danger. An unsustainable financial model and erratic national policy changes have squeezed budgets and sent costs soaring.
Unless something is done soon, most council landlords will struggle to:
- maintain their existing homes
- meet the new demands to improve them
- build new homes for social rent
Across the country development projects are being cancelled and delayed. This affects the local construction sector, jobs and housing market.
The reality is that some councils will have no option but to sell more of their existing stock to finance investment in an ever-shrinking portfolio of council homes.
Our recommendations
Our recommendations include urgent action to
- restore lost income
- unlock local authority capacity
The five solutions set out detailed and practical recommendations to the new government are:
- a new fair and sustainable Housing Revenue Account (HRA) model, including an urgent £644 million one-off rescue injection, and long-term, guaranteed rent and debt agreements
- reforms to unsustainable Right to Buy policies
- removing red tape on existing funding
- a new, long-term Green and Decent Homes Programme
- urgent action to restart stalled building projects, avoiding the loss of construction sector capacity and a market downturn
How we got here
In March 2024, we hosted a summit of 20 of the largest council landlords in England. Read more about the summit.
Our work led to the agreement of a set of recommendations, and we launched our interim report straight after the July 2024 General Election.
Following the launch of the interim report, we:
- joined with key partners in the broader social housing sector
- wrote to the new Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, asking her to urgently meet with us to discuss our shared challenges and solutions
As a result of our joint letter we met with Angela Rayner and Housing Minister, Matt Pennycook, on 31 July 2024, alongside partner councils and council and social housing sector representatives.
Our interim report was strongly welcomed by many of our peers, and our final report will be signed by over 100 council landlords. The scale of this cross-party coalition of authorities shows:
- how urgent our challenges are
- how much support there is for our recommendations
Our work in the media
Final report launch
We have had enormous national media interest, including from the Guardian, FT, Sky News and the Big Issue. Because of the great work of our partner councils we’ve also seen local press all over the country, from Suffolk to Swindon and Cambridgeshire to Yorkshire.
Before the final report launch
Our work has been covered in:
- Inside Housing, 6 March 2024
- Big Issue, 13 March 2024
- Independent, 10 July 2024
- BBC News, 11 July 2024
- BBC News, 11 July 2024
- Inside Housing, 11 July 2024
- Housing Today, 12 July 2024
- Guardian Op-Ed, 19 July 2024
- Inside Housing Op-Ed, 22 July 2024