Governments First Budget

‘This is what councils can (and should) offer in my opinion.’ NotSpaghetti
Up until the early 1990s Local Authorities had their own in house Architects, Surveyors and built their own council houses with their own Building Works dept.
In the 1990s the laws changed to ban LAs from borrowing money for building programmes. The Architects depts were disbanded and the few building projects stopped or put out to private tender.
Councils are unlikely to reinstate the in house building of their own properties ever again.
I totally agree that they should never have been sold off.

The right to buy was the worst case of gerimandering, buying votes on this way made housing unaffordable for a whole generation, Even worse Blair did nothing about it.

I agree Doodledog - I think right to buy was a dreadful thing.
Why we all need to buy anyway I just don't understand. If you have rented a house you are happy in, what you really need is security of tenure, swift repairs and a rent that feels "fair".
This is what councils can (and should) offer in my opinion.

Friends living in the "nicest" areas all bought their council homes and have made money out of it- by selling or letting.
Only one is still living in their ex-council house.

I'm a bit confused, too easy I know! My experience was that getting a council property was almost impossible in the London/SE area, and would involve years on the waiting list, despite the huge numbers of council estates.

Tell me about rising prices in the SE! When we were trying to buy our first house in outer London, the price rose 4 or 5 times during negotiations to the point we dropped out. Gazumping was rife!! In the end we paid over the odds to a seller that promised not to enter a bidding war.

Most of my friends managed to avoid pregnancy too 😂. I don’t think London was exempt from Norman Tebbit’s ‘list’ - in fact I think there are (or were) far more council estates there than elsewhere.

I wasn’t saying that my friends got pregnant more often than Londoners, but that (in answer to your question) in the 70s and 80s people across the country got houses more easily than now, and buying council houses was a fast track to affluence - particularly if you lived in the SE, as prices rose there much more than elsewhere.

That fast track left younger people facing all sorts of problems, and I really wish it had never been an option. If we can reset to when the whole country paid for and benefited from council housing, instead of everyone paying and some benefiting, I think it would be a good thing.

Because of where I live, my small house would be accessible to FT buyers and no dog kennel decisions. But huge shortage social housing. It's not all about buying, some people need the support of not having to manage all owning a home means.

When I was getting married we went to an estate agent that covered the outer suburbs of where I'd grown up. On hearing our budget we were informed that a dog kennel was outside our budget, tails between legs we exited the premises. Oh the shame and embarrassment 🤣🤣 (I didn't laugh at the time!)

Doodledog

Not sure if that answers your question Rosie, sorry

It does, sort of. Obviously things were very different in the SE and especially London, as a flat on a grotty estate, even if pregnant was a distinctly distant prospect, and most of us were too disciplined to contemplate pregnancy without a settled home.

As I say, much of my growing up was on a council estate. One that was fairly nice when we moved there, but gradually deteriorated and was designated a 'sink area' where the mostly troubled or trouble tenants were rehoused, causing grief to those that couldn't escape. Luckily my parents managed to escape to a SW England idyll where they spent their final years. It's ironic that I couldn't afford to buy anywhere in that area as privately owned property was out of the reach of all but the very rich. It's now a very 'in' place to live and properties sell for millions!

What exactly has been robbed from you by RR, mae?

.......and not so much as a dickie-bird about compensation for the now rapidly dying off WASPI Women. Thanks for nothing "Robber" Reeves......

Not sure if that answers your question Rosie, sorry

I have never lived in a council house, but my sister works in housing in a popular tourist area. Houses are insanely expensive and locals are priced out by second home ownership, so I have second hand knowledge from her, for what that’s worth. She says there is a 3 tier system with older tenants in secure tenancies and younger ones in HA places worried about bedroom taxes and so on. There are many small pockets of lovely houses reserved for locals in villages, and sprawling estates with drug problems and antisocial behaviour in neglected towns.

When I married in 1980 there were few private rentals where I lived - a suburb of an expensive city. People either bought a house or rented from the council, and it usually took about 6 months to get a house - less if there was a baby on the way (remember Tebbut’s ‘little list’?’). Council estates could be a bit grotty, but they were cheap. Friends of mine got council houses and bought them ten years or so later at huge discounts. Some bought their parents’ houses too. They either sold them at a huge profit or rented them out and the next generation had to rent from them, with no secure tenancy, no RTB, no reasonable rent.

My children’s generation (born early 90s) are screwed. I really feel for them. I don’t talk about their personal circumstances online, but they both spend a ridiculous percentage of their income on housing, as do their friends, whether renting or buying.

I think it was a workmanlike budget which put the tax increases on businesses and the wealthy and borrowed to fund investment but I think Reeves could have gone further by taxing the banks and large businesses more.

Sorry, I should have said the quote was from Doodledog.

I would like to see a ban on sales, and a concerted effort to go back to the days when anyone who wanted one could get a council house and stay there as long as they wanted. When was this as I honestly can't remember a time when that was possible and I'm a little older than you? Certainly when I got married there was no chance of getting a council property, it was private rental or buy your own. My parents with two children only managed to get a council maisonette (the type with two floors within a block of what looked like flats), no chance of a house with garden. Maybe it varied by area, but in the SE if I'd applied the waiting lists ran to many years if not decades with no realistic chance of getting to the top.
That's not to say I don't agree with your wish, just that I don't remember it ever being a real possibility in my lifetime.

Mollygo

The discussion on the radio earlier talked about building smaller units, preferably terraces because the space in between houses (when they are crammed close together) is wasted. I couldn’t help thinking that the speaker had never lived in a terraced house next to someone who gave piano lessons for a living, or where children learning an instrument lived, or even just noisy neighbours.
Smaller houses with limited or no parking even for EVs will certainly drive people back into public transport despite the increases.
Do you think a government is right to do things that will compel people to make that decision, whilst they themselves are sitting in large houses, plenty of parking and expenses to cover their travel?

I live in a terraced house in a block of four, which was originally built as "affordable housing". The sound insulation is good. I have allocated parking just round the corner from my house, where it would be easy to install a charging point. I have never been happier than living here.

MOnica Can you remember who the developer was? I suspect his views might be a tad biased.

PS. My son works for a housing charity/housing association and explained to me how it works. I think they've been expecting the latest news.

Doodledog

Casdon

Rosie51

Casdon

Angela Rayner bought her council house before the heavily discounted rate was introduced. People will still be able to buy their council houses under similar terms to hers.

I don't dispute that Casdon, but Greyisnotmycolour, has called TakeThat7 incredibly selfish for wanting to buy her council house. Discounts aside, the taking a council house out of public ownership is exactly the same.

I don’t have a problem with council houses being sold to tenants, if they want to stay in a house that is already their home, fine. However, the house should be sold to them at a price that enables the council to reinvest to build another house for another tenant at an affordable rent.

Can that happen though? There can't be both a discount and enough money to build an equivalent new house.

Also, the numbers of council houses should be growing, not just replaced like for like. If people want to buy they should buy on the open market. Council tenants are paying lower rent than those forced into the private sector, who have less and less chance of being offered a council house with a decent rent if the houses are constantly being sold. They are doomed to pay others' mortgages with rents that are often so high that they can't save deposits to buy houses of their own.

I think that people buying them are selfish, but I can't blame them for that. It is free money, and realistically, someone turning down the opportunity might spend the rest of their lives paying rent. If they did buy privately, they would be putting a hypothetical family before their own, which is a big ask. I don't think many people are highly principled enough to do that.

For that reason, I think that the RTB should be stopped altogether.

There can't be both a discount and enough money to build an equivalent new house.

Yes, they can. Over the years, councils take in more in rent than a house costs to build, so they can build up funds to rebuild. This can be supplemented by income from the sale of properties. Not only that, but if they were to be allowed to borrow, they can earn more in rent than the interest on the loans.

Moreover, many people in private rentals receive Housing Benefit (or the housing element of Universal Credit) from councils, which would reduce if people were paying lower rents.

I am not a housing expert by any means but isn’t the idea of housing associations flawed? If estates were owned by councils as they used to be, and rent used for maintenance rather than profit, any surplus could be used to build more homes- ideally with subsidies from the government when they can afford it.

Full council rents are not subsidised, contrary to popular belief. Private rents are seen as ‘market rate’ as so many council houses have been sold, but they are covering mortgages and profit as well as maintenance, so are artificially high.

I would like to see a ban on sales, and a concerted effort to go back to the days when anyone who wanted one could get a council house and stay there as long as they wanted.

I was listening to You and Yours (R4) earlier this week and a dveloper was talking of the problems he was having building a new estate.

Recent legislation states that 40% of houses on new developments need to be affordable. That is not usually a problem, because the developer does a deal with a Housing Association to buy the affordable houses at a price below the open market price and all works well.
BUT
The government has put a requirement on Housing Associations(HAs) to bring all their properties up to certain insulation standards by (I think) 2030, but not given them any extra money, so most of their investment is currently going into house refubishment not house acquisition.
THE RESULT
The developer cannot start on a new estate because he cannot find any HA willing to buy the affordable homes. He had approached 20 different HAs and not one was interested. So with no HA willing to take on the affordable homes, he therefore cannot develop this new estate meaning no new open market houses are being built either.

He also said that HA's are getting pickier and do not want to take up the HA allocation on small estates because they do not want to be responsible for little groups of houses , perhaps only 5 or 10, they prefer to have their houses in minimum groups of 20 plus, for ease of maintenance.

Now here is a problem that surely ought to be solvable, perhaps allow developers to dsitribute HA properties across their estates, more in the bigger estates, none in the very small ones. On other estates, open market houses could be built, but HA houses only built when there was an HA ready to buy them. Not only that a solution that has no cost implications.

I think a mixture of housing types is best. One issue at the moment is that there are a lot of single occupants of family sized council homes who can’t be accommodated in single person units, because there aren’t enough of them available. Surely local decision making based on known needs assessments will be the way forward.

Casdon

Ability to build new homes at an affordable rate must vary by Local Authority area Doodledog. Councils generally own land which is redundant which they can build on still, and per council area there are not large numbers of council homes sold annually. Where I live the strategy has been to build more small units of accommodation, and some larger homes that were formerly privately owned that come up for sale have been bought back by the council at full market rate. People do get very attached to their houses, and I think wherever possible they should be enabled to buy them, just my personal view.

That's true about differentials between areas. If they are sold at the going rate for the area it's maybe less of an issue, but I still think that as long as there is homelessness and people struggling on high rents then social housing should stay state owned.

Too many young people are running to stand still because of high rents, and can see no hope of having somewhere with a secure tenancy, never mind something of their own.

The discussion on the radio earlier talked about building smaller units, preferably terraces because the space in between houses (when they are crammed close together) is wasted. I couldn’t help thinking that the speaker had never lived in a terraced house next to someone who gave piano lessons for a living, or where children learning an instrument lived, or even just noisy neighbours.
Smaller houses with limited or no parking even for EVs will certainly drive people back into public transport despite the increases.
Do you think a government is right to do things that will compel people to make that decision, whilst they themselves are sitting in large houses, plenty of parking and expenses to cover their travel?

Thank you for all the details laid out, WWM.