C13 Housing

Composite of motion 37 and amendments

Congress notes that the lives of over one million households are being blighted because of a severe shortage of high quality social housing. There are 1.77 million households on housing waiting lists and over 63,000 homeless households. The policy pursued by successive governments that social housing should be provided by housing associations and that local authorities should be compelled to divest themselves of their housing stock means that almost half of local authorities no longer own or manage stock. This has been an unmitigated failure and has continually failed to provide sufficient social housing units to meet demand. The impact of this on families can be devastating, including increases in stress and other severe health problems.

Congress welcomes recent government announcements that councils will be given the ability to build their own housing but is concerned that the current proposals remain limited in scope.

Congress recognises that the downturn in the construction industry, especially house-building, has created spare capacity which if properly utilised could dynamically alter the configuration of the British housing market, redressing the balance between private and social housing and preventing future instability in the property sector.

Congress calls on the General Council to campaign, working to include the widest possible range of like-minded organisations, such as Shelter:

i)        to ensure local authorities are the primary deliverers of social housing, with housing associations and ALMOs

ii)      for further investment in local authority housing

iii)    for an expanded programme of affordable social housing

iv)    for a significant increase in the number of council houses for rent being built

v)      for councils to be properly funded and allowed to borrow in order to have the ability to build sufficient housing units to meet local needs

vi)    for a new sustainable business model for housing associations that looks beyond S.106 agreements

vii)  to ensure that all new social housing is built to the highest quality fire protection systems and that all existing social housing should be urgently assessed with a view to improving fire safety systems

viii)            for a sustained new-build social housing project to be used to increase dramatically the number of craft-based construction apprentices, in order to address the industry’s severe skills deficits.

Mover:   Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians
Seconder:   UNISON

Supporters:  Fire Brigades’ Union, Chartered Society of Physiotherapy