Quarter of English councils may have to sell homes to balance books, study finds
Share:
Exclusive: Social housing finance ‘crisis’ has already led 37% of local authorities to cut back on repairs and maintenance. More than a quarter of English councils expect to have to sell homes to balance their housing budgets while over a third have cut back on repairs and maintenance in what has been described as a crisis in social housing finance.
Based on responses from 76 stockholding councils, which manage their own social homes, the study found that nine in 10 expect to use emergency funds to try to balance the books in the next few years, and 71% say they are likely to delay or cancel ongoing housing projects.
Despite such measures, two-thirds of the councils said there was a risk they would still not be able to set a balanced budget. The study, compiled by Southwark council, in south London, and covering a combined stock of more than 870,000 homes, highlights the scale of the task facing Angela Rayner, the housing, communities and local government secretary, who has pledged to revitalise social housing.
Rayner, who is also deputy prime minister, has pushed for more central government spending on social housing as part of a wider plan to build 1.5m new homes across the five years of the current parliament. In November, she announced a consultation on ways to restrict the right-to-buy scheme, under which council tenants can buy their homes at a significant discount, which has severely reduced the availability of social housing since the 1980s.
