East Ham - "Progress with the People"

Being proud of living in West Ham for over 30 years I am sometimes accused of forgetting the other part of modern day Newham - East Ham. 

I actually think that East Ham town hall is more striking than West Ham (Stratford) and I am very proud that some of the earliest ever Council housing was built here - 

'Progress with the People': East Ham Borough Council took justified pride in the 80 council homes, designed by Borough Engineer AH Campbell, it built on Brooks Avenue in 1903.

Hat tip @MunicipalDreams @lccmunicipal & @LondonNurse2015

Council Housing in Llandudno - Municipal Dreams

If you want to know more about the history of Council housing check out these posts

"Council Housing in Llandudno: Part I, to 1939" and "Council Housing in Llandudno, Part II Post-1945"  in the Website "Municipal Dreams".

Picture is of the first Council houses to be built in Wales (in what was called "Council Street").  They were built in 1897 and cost £210 each. 

Many of the early high quality homes with excellent space standards are still in use and highly sought after. 

Llandudno is one of my very favourite places but I had no idea of this social history. I must find out more about Newham's Council housing history. 

Newham Planning Committee approves 3 new developments at 100% social rents; rough sleeping assessment centre & new emergency family accommodation

(after a rotten few days some good news)

This evening I took part in a 3 hour plus Newham Council Local Development Committee (LDC) meeting (small scale planning). There were 20 applications to consider.

There were 3 applications by Newham Council regeneration team for new build developments on the site of a former housing office in Romford Road and by knocking down disused garages in Forest Gate and Plaistow.

22 new Council homes - all of which will be at London Affordable rent including family units and wheelchair accessible.

We also approved a temporary assessment centre for rough sleepers. I spoke to the committee on how we have to be able to not only offer a bed to rough sleepers but get them assessed by trained staff who can arrange appropriate medical help and support in keep them off the streets.

Finally, we approved a brand new 27 unit emergency family accommodation block.

Newham Council's development company "Red Doors Ventures" is already building new homes on 8 sites with another 3 sites were work is expected to start soon. We are on target to reach the Mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz, manifesto commitment of 1000 new council homes at council rents by end of her first term.

At the next LDC meeting there will be a 5 further Newham Council new build housing applications

To the last 100 years of Council Housing in Newham and the next 100

Last Thursday evening I came back from holiday and went to the 3rd Newham Council Tenants and Leaseholders forum in East Ham Town Hall for Plaistow and Green Street residents.

There was around 50 residents present. Councillor Shaban Mohammed was the lead and worked with junior and senior housing officers to find out what is good and bad about the housing service in Newham and how can we work together in the future to improve it.

It was a really good meeting with lots of robust conversations at times and there was also many positive and constructive comments.

For many years there has been no effective consultation with Newham Council tenants and residents. You cannot run an effective housing management service without involving residents. Full stop.

Cllr Mohammed was also able to introduce the local Council liaison officers. Again, for many years there has been no single Council housing officer responsible for a particular patch or estate. We have now set up teams who will cover all parts of Newham (and our out of borough estates).

Many thanks to residents and officers for giving up an evening to make our housing service better. The last forum takes place on Tuesday. There will be follow up meetings in September.

• Forest Gate North, Forest Gate South, Stratford and New Town and West Ham - Tuesday 6 August between 6.30 and 8.30pm at Old Town Hall Stratford.

You need to book in advance since places are limited

At Thursday's meeting at the end I mentioned that this week was the 100th anniversary of Council Housing in this country and at this meeting we are planning ahead for the next 100 years of Council Housing.  

Newham Housing Points Scheme - Now and then

Hat tip picture to local photographer, Steve Lewis, and Newham History Society Facebook page. It would appear that this photo dates back to the late 1960s. I reckon that I am possibly the same age as that child.

Currently in Newham we are undertaking a review of our entire housing allocation policy. There will be extensive public consultation later this year.

We currently have 28000 households on our waiting list including 5100 homeless in temporary accommodation.

According to the photograph  91 (families?) were housing in June of that year. I wonder what the waiting list was then.

Right to Buy: Wrong for London

"Dear John

Tomorrow I’m publishing a new report which reveals the extent to which former council homes sold through the Right to Buy are now being rented out by private landlords. In advance of its publication I wanted to share some of the individual borough findings with Labour councillors in London today.

Across London, 42% of homes sold off through the Right to Buy are now being rented out by private landlords at market rates – up from 36% when I last investigated this issue in 2014.

That’s at least 11,000 more council homes in the hands of private landlords than there were five years ago, a shocking transfer of wealth from the many to the few.

In Newham, 44.6% of former council homes sold through the Right to Buy are now being rented out by private landlords. There are at least 5 individuals in Newham who own five or more former council homes.

My report also reveals that councils in London are spending a total of at least £22 million a year renting back 2,333 of their former council homes to house homeless families. These were homes they were forced to sell at a discount that they now have to pay market rates to rent back.

Newham has to rent back 808 homes at an annual cost of £12,858,869.

This is ludicrous, and the blame lies squarely with Tory government policies.

It would be galling if the crucial work Labour councils across London are doing building new council homes for the first time in a generation was undermined by the continuation of the Right to Buy.

That’s why I’m asking people to take action by signing this petition calling on Theresa May to end Right to Buy in England. The Scottish and Welsh governments have already done so.

I would be extremely grateful if you could promote this petition on social media so that it can attract as much support as possible.

The full report will be published on my website tomorrow along with the data tables. If you have any questions about the research, or would like to discuss it, please let me know".

Best wishes,

Tom Copley AM
London Assembly Member | City Hall Labour housing spokesperson

(this is a great evidence backed campaign led by Tom which should be supported by all of us concerned with the housing crisis in London and elsewhere. I have signed the petition)

Tories build fewest homes since Second World War

This article in today's Daily Telegraph shows that the Tories since 2010 will have built the fewest homes since the war. 

"new-build housing completions in England between 2010 and 2019 are set to be approximately 130,000 per year. That is well below the 147,000 of the 2000s or 150,000 of the 1990s, and half of the level in the 1960s and 1970s....

The picture becomes even worse when you factor in population size. In the 1960s, the new-build construction rate in England was roughly the equivalent of one home for every 14 people over the decade. In the 2010s, that ratio was one to 43, more than three times higher."

While this is shocking and helps explain our awful homelessness and affordability problems the only answer on offer from the Tories is to "encourage" home ownership.

Hello? Look at the chart that they used above to illustrate the problems. You can see for yourself that the major reason for the decline in house building is the collapse of Council housing (see the green).  The Private sector and Housing associations never filled this gap.

If you want to solve the housing crisis in the UK then you have to allow Councils to build homes at scale and give them the government subsidy to make them good quality and truly affordable. 

Four old ideas on how to build new Council Homes

Hat tip Room 151 - Sometimes the old ones are the best

"Chris Buss suggests four ways to stimulate the building of council housing.

(photo East Ham, Newham)

Earlier in the year the government issued a Green Paper on social housing; since then the world has gone Brexit crazy and little has been heard from central government on how they intend to proceed.The document itself quotes from the 1950s, a time when both major parties believed in the construction of council housing for rent. I have used the phrase “council housing” deliberately as it was at that time not synonymous with social housing.

Up until the 1970s council housing was not seen as a safety net but as an aspirational step up. It wasn’t stigmatised, but seen as a move up the ladder from poor-quality private rented accommodation. In fact, to get council housing, you normally had to be of good standing, in work and be able to pay the rent without assistance. That, however, changed, largely due to several apparently unconnected government decisions from the late ’70s and early ’80s which have led to the stigmatised view of social housing that exists today – not my words, but those of the prime minister.

A look at the statistics for the period from 1945 to 1979 show that this was the boom or golden era for building council housing. Much of that building was to replace stock damaged or destroyed by the Luftwaffe, but there was also much slum clearance. The quality of the replacement stock was variable, with much of the stock built in the 1950s and early 1960s being of good quality and is still in demand today. However, much of the stock built from the mid-1960s onwards was of lower quality and fits perhaps the more stereotypical image of council housing – high-rise, often system-built and poorly built and designed. Much is now the focus of regeneration schemes.

Since 1979, governments of both major parties have almost without exception turned their back on building new council housing. Both parties have, until very recently, almost actively encouraged councils to divest themselves of their stock to either housing associations or to arm’s length management organisations. Funding for new build has been virtually extinguished until recently and, in the light of that, the considerable expertise that councils had in council house building and delivery has virtually disappeared as the demand for those services has been eliminated.

The Green Paper and subsequent announcements from central government appear to be a step towards a small renaissance in council house building. So let’s make sure we learn from the golden era, to ensure the next generation of council housing doesn’t become the regeneration scheme of the 2060s. We should, I believe, look at the following: funding, place and people. In this piece I will only look at funding.

Although the system changed over time, virtually all council house building before 1979 had significant subsidy attached to it. This was in the days before the ring-fenced housing revenue account where any increase in costs of borrowing or running the stock would, if not met from rents, fall to the general rate payer i.e. the local tax payer. The subsidy was normally a revenue subsidy to reduce the cost of borrowing to the local council. It must be remembered that in those days the cost of a house was significantly less if inflated to current prices than a property is today, particularly in London and the South East.

In the present day, the subsidy available for social housing delivery is a cost per unit grant to reduce the capital cost,with the balance being met from borrowing or other resources. Most of the social housing currently produced is in effect a by-product of the planning system that tries to ensure that social or affordable rent housing is produced as part of private for-sale schemes, and again most of this housing is provided and managed by housing associations, not councils.

This is a far cry from the pre-1979 arrangement where councils brought forward their own schemes supported by central government subsidy. A return to those days is perhaps impractical but there are some steps that could be taken that would have minimal impact on wider government finances yet would prove the government is serious about encouraging councils to build a new generation of council housing for rent.

For councils the normal source of borrowing is the Public Works Loans Board (PWLB) which, in effect, is a loan from the government. One way of reducing the cost of housebuilding to councils would be to reduce the mark-up, or profit, that the government makes from lending to councils. Most councils borrowing at present from the PWLB would be paying the certainty rate of +80 basis points over gilts. One option would be for government to authorise the PWLB to reduce the mark-up for social housing to +40 basis points, a dispensation given once before as part o fthe HRA subsidy buy-out deal in 2012.

In high-cost areas of the country like London this would make some of the more marginal schemes deliverable. If government were serious about helping councils to deliver more social housing,this would be a very quick win.

The second step towards greater freedom is the use of right-to-buy (RTB) capital receipts. I won’t go into the rights and wrongs of RTB here as that’s the subject of a piece all by itself. However, on the acknowledgement that RTB in some form will remain, current restrictions on when councils can spend RTB receipts lead to potentially long-term decisions.

The current restriction of spend within three years of their receipt doesn’t reflect the reality of how long sites take to come to fruition – site assembly, design and procurement alone require an absolute minimum period of at least five years. And it goes without saying that 100% of receipts should be applied. I would add that I’m in favour of a restriction that RTB receipts should only be applied to new-build properties and not, as can happen at present, to acquisitions, many of which involve the buying back by the council of ex-RTB properties! This restriction would incentivise councils to look at building new units.

The third step is to create a more generous and less conditional grant regime. On this I speak from a London perspective, where the mayor and GLA control the purse strings rather than Homes England. At present in London the maximum grant available is £100,000 for a property which is on, or below the London affordable rent cap which is currently £158.84 per week for a two-bedroom unit. When this is translated into the cost of financing the debt, managing and maintaining a unit, it means a unit of accommodation particularly in inner London can only be built where the council owns the site and there is little need for demolition or buying out of other units. Where there are significant acquisition costs, this then makes social housing virtually impossible to deliver without either greater public subsidy or private subsidy, either through the planning system or through arrangements with the private sector, or building direct for sale. This to me is unsatisfactory – if the government is serious about austerity being over, then it should seriously look at increasing grant in high spend areas.

When talking about conditional grant, I am referring again to London where grant on regeneration schemes is conditional on a residents’ ballot. I would have thought following the Brexit ballot in 2016 that politicians would want to be very careful about having a single-issue vote as it sometimes finishes up with a perverse result! As an alternative, I would suggest that any grant should be conditional on those tenants and resident leaseholders displaced as part of a regeneration scheme having a guaranteed right to return and a single move policy.

My final point is for greater flexibility between the HRA and general fund. Ideally, I would like to see a return to the pre-1989 position of no HRA ring-fence, but realistically I know this will not happen. However, there is one area where greater flexibility would assist and that’s on the transfer, or appropriation of land between the two sides of the statutory ring-fence.

This land transfer is often necessary to facilitate regeneration or development. Under the rules as they stand at present any appropriation is required to transfer at market value, the impact of which can at times be to add additional costs to the HRA, which may make a build project less viable. Based on my experience, much of the land in question, particularly that held in the general fund, was initially acquired by the council well before the HRA ring-fence was established under the 1989 Local Government and Housing Act, and was often acquired initially under broad housing powers, such as slum clearance.

The council would then have undertaken a wholescale housing redevelopment which may have included the building of a facility such as a day nursery or old people’s home (that’s what they were called in the 1960s).

At that time there was no financial transaction required to reflect the differing uses of the site as both council housing and the other facilities were accounted for wholly in the general fund. That’s not the case now, though, but by enabling land to move freely from the general fund to the HRA without a technical finance transaction getting in the way, councils will avoid pre-ring-fence history scuppering a scheme’s overall viability.

Even if all four of these options were adopted they would, I accept, only impact the supply of council housing at the margins, but that’s a good start. What’s really needed is a significant boost in funding, a return to much more direct intervention by central government, moving the emphasis on housing support from personal support (welfare benefits) to the subsidy of bricks and mortar so that councils can build more housing that is affordable to rent.

To do that in the short term will mean an increase in overall expenditure, but unless this is done there is little hope of reducing the queues for social housing and curtailing demand for benefits. Building council houses is a true spend-to-save initiative – an old idea, but sometimes the old ones are the best ones.

Chris Buss is ex director of finance and deputy chief executive at London Borough of Wandsworth

Old ladies tell off kids playing in London council estate 1970s

An age old problem. It hadn't changed that much when I first started working in Council Housing in the early 1990s in Bethnal Green and still goes on in Newham and elsewhere today.

hat tip "From the Kinolibrary Archive Film collections. To order the clip clean and high res or to find out more visit http://www.kinolibrary.com. Clip ref CC8"

Shot on the Loraine Estate and Holloway Estate, Holloway Road. Which by coincidence is near to where my UNISON Housing Association branch office is located.

The Housing Crisis (and what to do about it) TUC Congress 2015

 This was my speech I made late on Monday afternoon.

"Congress, President, John Gray UNISON moving Composite 2 on the Housing Crisis.

Congress, housing is a fundamental human right yet successive UK governments have failed to ensure that its citizens are adequately housed. The result is that the nation faces a desperate crisis - an acute shortage of housing, overcrowding and homelessness.

Decades of under-investment in housing have led to 1.5m fewer social and affordable homes for rent. This has pushed up rents and house prices and squeezed the incomes of citizens, with young people and families with children struggling to find a decent and affordable home to rent or buy.

As a consequence of the housing crisis, the nation faces the huge task of building at least 250,000 homes every single year to meet housing demand, but less than half of these homes are actually being built.

The shortage of social housing and the un-affordability of homeownership has also seen the private rented sector fail to deliver. We know that young people in particular have had a poor housing deal. Many of them are trapped in a cycle of expensive insecure, short-term lets in very poor and even unsafe housing.

While Government cuts to housing benefits and soaring rents have left thousands of people facing a housing benefit shortfall and at risk of rent arrears, evictions,homelessness and widespread financial hardship. In London, where I am a housing worker, welfare reforms have led to the social cleansing of many families who have fallen behind their rent payment. In England, homelessness has increased by 9% since 2014 and across the nation, 1.6m children live in temporary housing.

Congress, given the evidence that the number of social homes has declined dramatically, and given that the Government’s 2012 promise for 1-1 replacement of  stock sold under Right to Buy has been broken, it is incredible that the Government has announced proposals to extend the Right to Buy to housing association tenants in England. This will mean a worsened housing crisis with less social housing available.

The policy will also undermine the financial ability of housing associations to build and develop genuinely affordable housing, and it will also undermine the finances of local authorities forced to sell off ‘high value’ council housing to support the extension of the policy.

Congress, given the deepening housing crisis - soaring housing costs, reduced benefits, and a depleted social housing stock - there is clearly an urgent need for housing policies that recognise the need for more social and affordable housing, not less.

Government housing policies including ‘Right to Buy’, ‘Starter Homes’, ‘Help to Buy’ and ‘Pay to Stay’ do nothing to tackle the core housing problem, which is essentially a crisis of supply and affordability across all housing markets.

Their policies will likely lead to the death of the social housing sector as they risk taking money from it to support limited homeownership and sub market renting - and as a consequence there will be fewer social homes at social rents available, leaving thousands of people on low and middle incomes struggling to find a decent home they can afford to live in.

Congress, the solution. While UNISON is pleased that Jeremy Corbyn has just appointed John Healey as Shadow Housing Minister we can't just wait until 2020. The Government needs to significantly invest in housing now and commit to a national public housebuilding programme with local authorities and housing associations playing a significant role in its delivery to ensure we build the homes people need at prices and rents they can afford.

This composite sets out a programme of work that will enable us to campaign for further measures to tackle the housing crisis.

Such as

• Developing a coherent and consistent housing policy 

• Allowing local authorities to be set free to borrow to invest in council housing 

• Reform welfare policy and enable the transition from “benefits to bricks”

• Effectively regulate the private rented sector and controls on rent

Such a programme makes sense economically. Building more homes of all types, will help create jobs and boost the economy. It will also reduce the cost of housing overall for everyone, leading to a lower Housing Benefit bill.

It will ensure people have access to a decent and secure housing that will give them the stability and security they need to raise their families in strong local communities. Finally, Congress. It is the right thing to do too, the mark of a civilised nation is one that ensures that its citizens are adequately housed.

Congress please support this composite. I move".

This issue touched a nerve and there was a wide ranging and at times passionate debate on the composite which ended in Congress voting unanimously in favour.

Hayes and a Pioneer of Council Housing

I have been meaning to cross post this charming story of early London municipal socialism from "Hayes People History" for a while.

Councillor Robert William Gunton was a Civil Servant who came to Hayes which is now in Hillingdon, West London in 1913.  He became Chair of the Council in 1917.

Hayes was one of the first Labour Councils in Britain who as early as 1914 appointed "a sanitary inspector to "compel landlords to put their houses in a proper state of repairs".

In April 1919 Gunton was involved in ensuring "May Day" became an official Council holiday, seconding the resolution he referred to Oliver Cromwell having done away with it because of heavy drinking. "They had reached a stage he thought when working class did behave themselves better". Hayes became one of the first councils in Britain to allow their employees to enjoy International Workers Day, May 1st as a public holiday.

It was Councillor Gunton who moved the resolution at the Special Hayes Urban District Council held on 12th July 1919 not to participate in the national "Peace Celebrations" on July 1919, on the grounds of cost and glorification of war, an all most unprecedented move.

Gunton with other local councillors pioneered the Building of Council Housing in Hayes. He was Chair of Housing when in 1920 Dr Addison, Minister of Health laid the first brick of a planned 2000 home estate.

The first building contractor was a certain Robert McAlpine!

"Each Council house was estimated to cost £675 and it was expected that two houses a day would be built, however due to the shortage of bricklayers they initially completed just three quarters of a house.

The situation with the bricklayers took a disastrous turn in April 1920 when the bricklayers went on strike. Councillor Gunton once again came to the rescue and secured agreement from both sides to end the dispute winning the praise of Sir Robert McAlpine.

Councillor Gunton was keen that the new Council estate would enjoy facilities such as shops as well as a Council run Cinema and a Public House (Pub) run on the Carlisle lines (Carlisle had successfully and profitably put its pubs under state control during the war to regulate alcohol especially spirits consumption as a safety measure as Carlisle was a Munitions town).

But not everyone supported the Council Housing scheme the local Conservatives argued that the workers houses should be built by factory owners and not paid for by the ratepayers.

Such was the support for the Council housing scheme locally that by April 1920 the local newspaper could announce that every member of Hayes Council was now a Labour Party member - 100% Labour.

In January 1921 Councillor Gunton could claim with some justification that

"Hayes was one of the few and probably only councils in the country that could say there were no slums existing in their district"

The Council house scheme was so popular, that delegations flooded in to see the developments, delegations from councils across the United Kingdom and as far away as America Austria and Japan.

Despite the cost, Councillor Gunton could boast in 1924 "The Labour Party was generally associated by the reactionary press with high rates, well the rates in Hayes did not happen to be high rates".

Finally R.W. Gunton was elected as a Labour Middlesex County Councillor Alderman during the first Labour controlled Middlesex County Council in 1946.

Given Councillor Gunton's role in pioneering and securing large scale affordable and good quality housing for many generations of Hayes residents, it is a shame his work and deeds are not better known.

Michael Walker

History repeats itself?

Yesterdays Inside Housing email bulletin reports that Edinburgh Council is to build the city’s first council homes in nearly 20 years.

For the past 2 decades or so Conservative and Labour governments have effectively stopped Councils building new homes since they thought that housing associations could do a better job.

Successive governments also argued that loans to housing associations did not count as government debt which helped improve British public finances and support the pound. It’s a bit of a cheap jibe of course, but such considerations did not stop the government nationalising Northern Rock I suppose?

I think the real major reason was that Councils were generally perceived as poor builders and landlords. I will admit that I have some sympathy with this view. Today, by coincidence I was chatting with a trade union member who told me that his Mum tried to buy her Council flat a few years ago but the building society refused to give a loan to any flats in her “system built” block. They would give some loans to blocks built via this construction method but only depending upon the (private sector) company used to actually build the block.

Some firms built these blocks properly, many didn’t.

Mind you, some housing associations in recent years have had to knock down and rebuild new stock which has been poorly designed, badly built or wrongly located.

I actually think that there is a role for both housing associations and Councils to develop and manage homes. Not just in the social housing sector either. Without opening up old wounds, now that the sector has been well and truly broken up, then perhaps it is time that housing associations and Councils face a level playing field with regard to new investment?

Ironically, “big is beautiful” is back in vogue again. Many Council Housing departments were criticised for being too large and bureaucratic. Now for what I think is fairly obvious “economy of scale” reasons, some informed pundits think that housing associations should each ideally manage 100,000 plus units to be really efficient.

I can also remember attending noisy trade union rallies on cold, wet and dark winter evenings which tried to stop local Councillors from privatising their in-house repair and maintenance teams (DLO - Direct Labour Organisations). They were also supposed to be too large and unresponsive.

Nowadays, it is not uncommon for large housing associations to start up their own direct labour force since most private contractors are simply not able to offer a proper service based on “subbies” and that in-house teams do not charge VAT (it’s actually a “no-brainer” that properly managed in-house teams are cheaper and better).

So history is in danger of repeating itself and so where are we in this current cycle? Have we really learnt the lessons so not repeat the mistakes of the past?