Lib Dems Highlight Social Housing Crisis in Bracknell

6.36.29pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 26th Apr 2005

Lib Dems can reveal that some 3,600 households are on Council waiting lists for social housing. Of these only 2% can afford to buy if market priced accommodation were available.

The Council's housing stock is severely depleted through the Right to Buy programme and there are now 5,875 homes in total with a further 1,000 provided by other providers. 9,000 council properties have been sold under Right-to-Buy and although sales have tailed off to 75-80 per year this still represents an ongoing net decrease in available housing.

The recent housing needs survey 2002-04 shows that to meet the existing backlog 600 social homes need to be developed per year over the next 5 years. However overall (market and social) new housing in the Borough is only 250 per year. A key problem is that the favoured method of providing new social housing via the developer only applies on sites of 25 dwellings or more and even at this level only 23%(rounded up) of dwellings are allocated for social needs - there are simply not enough large development sites in the area to meet the acute need on this basis alone.

In March 2005 of the 3,600 households on the waiting list most are staying in private rented accommodation paying higher rents than they can afford, 100 are homeless in temporary accommodation and others include couples living apart. A further 10 households are in Bed & Breakfast accommodation. There are no asylum seekers in council property in Bracknell Forest according to the Housing Department.

Only 9 properties per week become available - at this rate it would take almost 8 years to clear the backlog. This assumes that no new demand is created from children growing up, new families forming and workers moving into our area.

Lee Glendon, Parliamentary Candidate said:

"The acute shortage of social housing has been ignored for too long in Bracknell. Our residents' surveys show that whilst there is a major concern amongst many people over the impact of unsustainable developments in and around Bracknell, most people accept that we need to provide more housing. Urgent action is therefore needed at local and national level to provide the affordable housing our community needs. The Lib Dems are committed to tackling this problem".

Options under consideration by the Council:

1. Private sector leasing working with private landlords on assured short hold tenancies - especially if the "buy-to-let" market slows down and surplus capacity is made available - the Council would offer rent guarantees and provide deposits.

2. The Council is going to re-launch the strategic housing partnership to work with housing associations much more closely in order to drive higher social housing build programmes

3. Look after existing housing stock by transferring ownership out of the Council to allow a housing association for example to fund the required upgrades to meet government standards. The council is not prepared to make the required £47m investment.

Lib Dems would take the following action:

1) Allow councils to determine the Right to Buy discount to meet the social housing needs of the local area.

2) Introduce a new way of accessing property ownership through establishing community trusts where tenants could purchase shares in the trust that rise with the value of the property and provide a gain on selling the share but the property would remain in the ownership of the trust.

3) Identify and promote the development of social housing on surplus public land especially Ministry of Defence, NHS and local authority. e.g. what we would have done with the RAF Staff College site.

Conservative Policy for housing would be a disaster for Bracknell:

1) They will cut the national budget for social housing by £1billion.

2) The will sell off state owned land to fund the redundancy payments to the 250,000 civil servants they are going to make redundant (£5.9billion in costs).