End the Housing Emergency - Build Social Homes Again

On Monday 20th July, the new Prime Minister appointed his Secretary of State for Housing:  Angela Rayner.  

Please call on them to turn their promises into actions and deliver the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period.  We will be delivering postcards to welcome Angela Rayner back to the job, and remind her that the only way to end the housing emergency is by getting councils building social homes again.  

Successive governments haven't built enough social homes for decades and now there are record level of child homelessness in England.  Over 176,000 children are homeless and living in temporary accommodation.  Housing costs have soared.  Overcrowding, damp and mould are rife.  

If the Prime Minister and Angela Rayner want to make sure everyone has a decent home they can afford, they must get councils building social homes again and fast.  

Historically, local authorities were the biggest builders of social housing.  In the 1960s, councils built over 120,000 social homes a year an average.  Now, we're in a bizarre position where councils are spending huge amounts of money on the £31.8 billion of historic Housing Revenue Account debt to the Treasury, rather than building new social homes.

Our research shows that if all the debt was written off, we could unlock investment for 284,000 new social homes.

The government can cancel this historic HRA debt without having any immediate impact on its fiscal rules.  That's because the money is essentially owned from one part of the public sector (councils) (the Treasury).  It's already on their balance sheet.

This is one of the key things the new Secretary of State must change to end the housing emergency.  Help us get this message to them today - to cancel the HRA debt and get councils building as their top priority.