“Lifting the housing borrowing cap was a big step forward, but we now need the Government to go further in the Queen’s Speech by devolving Right to Buy so councils retain 100 per cent of their receipts to reinvest in building new homes, and can set discounts locally.”
Responding to New Economics Foundation research which has found that only 6 per cent of homes built on sold-off public land will be for affordable social rent, the Local Government Association’s housing spokesman, Cllr David Renard, said:
“Councils are increasingly developing on their own land to try and boost the amount of affordable housing available.
“With more than one million people on housing waiting lists, homes for affordable and social rent are desperately needed across the country. If we are to tackle the housing crisis, we need to kick-start a genuine renaissance in council house building, accompanied with the right infrastructure.
“The last time the country built more than 300,000 homes a year was 1977/78, when councils built 44 per cent of them. Latest figures show councils were only able to directly build just over 2,500 homes last year – the highest level since 1992 – but need to be able to do so much more.
“Lifting the housing borrowing cap was a big step forward, but we now need the Government to go further in the Queen’s Speech by devolving Right to Buy so councils retain 100 per cent of their receipts to reinvest in building new homes, and can set discounts locally.”