"More and Better Council Homes Needed" Riba Tells Government

Posted by Ideal Modular Homes on 10th December 2020 -

Architects have told ministers that the UK needs a council housing revolution. A report has shown that the government needs to support and resource local authorities to deliver a generation of quality council homes across the country, while reforming the way it’s procured.

According to research by the RIBA, this plan would end the housing crisis which currently has around 1.15 million on social housing waiting lists, while creating 250,000 jobs at a time when the uncertainty around Brexit and the pandemic has led to a significant amount of redundancies around the country. 

In 2018, just 13,000 new homes were delivered by local authorities. The charity, Crisis, has calculated that the government needs to build at least 90,000 homes per year just to meet demand. The report, which was based on two years of interviews with architects, planners and local government officials, highlights that there’s an issue with procurement and that it has a major impact on the quality of housing being built. It also argues that the government needs to set higher standards, invest in the built environment and drive the reform of the construction industry. It’s recommendations cover finance, procurement and oversight of new social housing. 

Current public sector procurement often makes it difficult to deliver both quality and value. When compared to some countries, we’re considerably less imaginative, less sustainable but more expensive. More investment is needed from the government to ensure local authorities are able to build more sustainable, innovative and well designed homes that promote good mental wellbeing for residents, while delivering value for money. 

With a large proportion of the population living in poorly maintained, short-term and expensive rented homes that fail to meet their needs, we urgently need a fresh approach to council housing. The pandemic brought with it a focus that our homes are much more important in relation to our health. Safe, sustainable and healthy homes with ample space around them to promote placemaking needs to be the focus for local authorities. 

It’s been well over three years since the government promised a new era of social housing policy in England which puts people at the heart of it. A Social Housing Green Paper was actually published in summer 2018, but it was quite vague and didn’t have much in the way of reform. 
As we’ve mentioned in previous blogs, if the government is serious about their plans to ‘build back better’ and ‘build, build, build’, it needs to be backing local authorities to invest in their communities so they can procure and build homes that are fit for the future and well-designed. This eagerly awaited white paper, which Robert Jenrick has promised to deliver before the end of the year, could completely transform the social housing sector and change the direction of policy discussions.