The North is short of over 70,000 social housing units. Can Rayner fix it?

Barry Lanza was given just minutes to pack his bags and leave the Blackpool flat he’d called home for 36 years when the building was condemned.

The 72 year old, who has a brain tumour, prostate cancer and COPD, was forced to pack his medication and head to a guest house with his two chihuahuas, before paying for two nights in a Travelodge at his own expense and then staying with friends.

“It’s a nightmare,” says Lanza. “If it wasn’t for my friends I wouldn’t have got anywhere.”

The building next to his, a derelict former department store, was being demolished. Scaffolding had fallen to within six inches of his patio door at the South Shore property. His garden was ruined, fences were down and a kitchen window was broken.

“It’s upsetting – 36 years of memories and there’s no way I can take everything with me. Not even an apology or a penny in compensation – that’s what upsets me.”

Lanza’s plight may be extreme, but many tenants across the North, in both the private and social rented sectors, will understand his distress and vulnerability. Supply of homes is low, conditions are poor and rents are growing.

Angela Rayner has promised the “biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation”. But with nearly 1.3 million households on social waiting lists in the country, 150,000 children in temporary accommodation and rents up 8.6 per cent in the last year, will the necessary funding emerge to match her rhetoric – and how did we get here in the first place?

Since the Thatcher government forced local authorities to sell off council housing at big discounts, forbade them from using the receipts to build more, and pressured them into transferring remaining stock to arm’s length management organisations, social housing has been largely in the hands of housing associations.

Tracing their origins to late 19th century small-scale charity providers, they were promoted through the 1960s and 1970s as alternatives to those council departments said to be beset by bureaucracy and distant from tenants. They were brought into national government funding streams in 1974.

By 1988, when much of the better-quality housing stock had been sold off and mass unemployment meant fewer people could afford to exert their right to buy on the remaining ones, housing associations were “reconfigured as the primary conduit for new council house building”, says Richard Goulding, a housing expert at Sheffield University Management School.

Further funding cuts meant housing associations were forced to top up with commercial loans, which led to consolidation in the sector. Their values changed, says Goulding, and the bigger ones became more distant from their tenants, reconstructing themselves as developers. The 2010 coalition government almost eliminated funding for new social housing, the Tenants’ Services Authority was abolished, and regulation on hazards was cut.

“A lot of chickens came home to roost,” says Goulding. “Standards have gone down. The amount of money going into maintenance and repairs hasn’t been enough.”

He says the sector is still quite diverse, with a lot of good being done by smaller-scale housing associations or by committed individual housing officers.

“But we’ve seen the worst of what can happen with disasters like Grenfell, with the lack of building safety standards, which applies across both private rented housing and the social housing sector. We’ve seen it with awful situations like in Rochdale where a young boy, Awaab Ishak, died because of mould.

“However, you can also see what some people have called the ‘slow violence’ – not enough maintenance, not enough repairs and the fundamental problem, I think, of social landlords just not listening to tenants. That’s across the board, whether it’s local authorities or housing associations.”

Residents organising in the grassroots

In Lancaster and Morecambe, the Tenants and Community Union (TACU) is gearing up for a campaign on damp and mould. Activists believe Ishak’s tragic death has at least forced the social housing sector to become more proactive on maintenance and repairs, but private landlords are not acting and the problem is widespread, particularly because of the climate in the area.TACU was formed as a grassroots member organisation in 2021 to improve the living situations of local people, with a focus on housing. One of its members, Jim, says it employs a blend of direct action and campaigning. It’s helped people struggling with private landlords wanting to evict them and organised peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations outside council meetings.

“We don’t hesitate to get cracking when something really needs to be done and we really hold ourselves accountable to our membership,” says Jim. Another TACU activist adds: “I can’t stress how much it affects our members’ day to day lives, having to constantly battle against insecure housing.”

Lancaster Council has an unusually large amount of housing stock – 3,702 homes – but waiting lists are long. TACU has supported members who have been told by the council they are making themselves intentionally homeless, therefore reducing its obligation to re-home them.

It has also helped tenants on the Mainway estate in Skerton to organise after many were moved out in advance of a large-scale refurbishment scheme that has stalled. The council intended itself to refurbish two blocks, Lune House and Derby House, but no can no longer afford it, and private developers will instead deliver the homes. More residents are set to be moved out of another building, Bridge House, now it’s been decided to demolish it.

“It seems short-sighted to have started something you can’t actually finish,” says Jim, who says his own six-year council tenancy has been a “lifeline for me – it really has changed my life”.

Working with the Mainway tenants, TACU wants like-for-like accommodation for them, in Skerton if possible, full home loss compensation and disturbance payments, and continuity of secure tenancies. Tellingly, its final demand is “more council houses, not less”.

Jim says: “In some ways councils themselves are as much victims of a broken system as residents. We’re calling for a shake-up of the whole economics of the system so that councils are empowered to build houses.”

Councillor Caroline Jackson, deputy leader and cabinet member with responsibility for housing, said: “As part of the MyMainway project, in June this year the council submitted a planning application to build 135 new homes on the former Skerton High site as part of its long-term ambition to provide more affordable housing for its communities. Once built, this first phase is anticipated to provide housing for residents of Mainway.

"If approved, these plans will breathe new life into Skerton with a development that's fit for the future and creates new, modern homes that benefit from the latest energy efficiency measures.

"Separately, Place Capital Group Ltd has successfully obtained planning permission for Lune House and Derby House, however, the sale of these blocks is complex and work has not yet begun.

"Any affected residents have been assisted to find alternative housing solutions, either on Mainway or elsewhere within the council's housing stock. They have been supported financially with moving costs, and where appropriate received compensation.

"Twenty one of the 44 flats in Bridge House are currently occupied and the council continues to liaise with affected residents while the council further considers its future."

A supply line that’s too short

Housing associations, meanwhile, are struggling with supply. Hollie Wright, researcher at the New Economics Foundation, says the shift away from grant and loan funding through Homes England has meant that 47 per cent of all affordable homes built annually in the last 15 years have been paid for by private developers. This is done through legally binding Section 106 agreements requiring developers to contribute to affordable housing and infrastructure if they are to get planning permission.

It can be a successful way of capturing some of the land value of these developments, says Wright. But developers can fight back against planners’ demands, arguing their schemes will not be financially viable if they have to make contributions.

Once agreed, planning departments often lack the capacity to enforce them. Redcar in Teesside is one of the areas that have “really struggled in not being able to enforce even the meagre contributions they’ve been able to secure”, says Wright.

And the agreements focus on affordable rather than social housing – the former defined as having rents of 80 per cent of market value, often out of the reach of many local people. Social rents tend to be closer to 60 per cent of market rents.

An even greater problem, however, is where developers are not building.

“When you’ve got places in the North that have a lot less business interest in having those developments being built, 15 per cent of nothing is nothing,” says Wright. “There’s a large number of local authorities in the North where there have been no social homes built since 2010.”

Government figures show 22,023 social homes were either sold or demolished last year in England, yet just 9,561 social homes were built – a net loss of 12,462 homes. But research for Shelter earlier this year said building 90,000 social homes could add £51.2 billion to the economy.

“We should focus on social housing, not affordable,” says Wright. “The benefits you get from social housing are not replicated in the benefits you get from affordable housing.”

Teesside had lower rents that many other areas in the North but they are increasing disproportionately compared with average incomes, says Tom Zagoria of Housing Action Teesside. People in private renting are struggling to maintain their tenancies, there is less social housing and that puts pressure on temporary accommodation for people facing homelessness.

“From our perspective the biggest issue has been the loss of social housing,” says Zagoria. “Across most of the boroughs of Teesside the social housing has been given away to these unaccountable, effectively private organisations.

“When we go out and door knock we’re seeing huge numbers of people who’ve got damp or mould. Kitchens were promised to be replaced every 10 years and they’ve been waiting 25 years.

“We’re seeing these recurrent problems on a neighbourhood scale and it’s going to take a lot of tenant organising to be able to face down some of these bigger social landlords because the local councils have got no real leverage to do it, because they don’t have an alternative.”

The crisis has played out further in Teesside with a rise in rough sleeping, he says – “people who should meet priority need and certainly have a local connection, but there’s no temporary accommodation available for them.

“We’ve reached the point that the rest of the country has reached before where there’s people living rough on the street despite having done everything right, because there’s just nowhere for them.”

Housing Action Teesside has had successes. In Middlesbrough, it supported tenants in the CIAC Building whose centralised commercial energy bills meant they didn’t qualify for cost-of-living support through the government’s Energy Support Scheme. Following a petition and support from local MP Andy McDonald, the government relented and residents not only in Middlesbrough but across the country were able to apply for the £400 energy bill rebate.

Back to Blackpool

Zagoria stresses too that, in an area where riots took place in summer, “we make sure we’re representing migrant communities who face the same issues”.

He adds: “What we would want to see is a massive injection of funding to local councils to either build or acquire empty homes and use them as council homes. That’s the answer to this crisis.

“The answer is only going to come when we start to put the interests of working class people, regardless of where they come from, ahead of the money making operations of some of these big organisations.”

In Blackpool, Lanza was about to be rehoused as The Lead went to press.

With the intervention of local MP Chris Webb and Blackpool Council, he was set to move into a supported flat in Bispham – not ideal, as it’s six miles and a £10 taxi away, but he hasn’t entirely ruled out being able to move back if the house is ever rebuilt.

“The council, the MP and the landlord have been brilliant,” he says. “It’s just the developers.”

Blackpool has 12,000 people on its social housing waiting list but 1,000 social homes were sold or demolished in 2013-23, according to housing and homelessness charity Shelter. Three-quarters of its private renters rely on housing benefit. Webb says a letting agent told him that 30 applications for one property is normal.

But many privately rented properties in inner Blackpool fall well below standard. Mould is widespread, much of it falling into category 1, a serious threat to health and safety.

Blackpool Council has responded to the local manifestation of the housing crisis with an innovative private rented company in which it is the sole shareholder.

Getting going in 2016, Blackpool Housing Company has acquired and refurbished 660 homes, many from former guest houses, which it then rents out in the private market while offering additional support to tenants, such as a 24-hour helpline.

It’s a response to high levels of deprivation and a dysfunctional housing market, according to interim managing director Lee Burrell, with private landlords profiting from a model of minimum investment but high rates of return, supported by housing benefit. The result was “overwhelmingly poor quality”.

Burrell says Blackpool Housing Company is a way of being agile and tackling the marketplace from the inside, rather than trying to regulate it from the outside. “It was a unique decision, driven by social values rather than strict commerciality, but we are a commercial business.”

Rents are higher than local housing allowance but “significantly less than market”. Blackpool Housing Company runs checks on prospective tenants, and works with the council to identify those in need of housing. Many are on benefits but a “good proportion” are self-payers.

Tenancy sustainment is high, showing it offers secure housing. And with the government’s forthcoming Renters’ Rights Bill containing strong measures to protect tenants from unscrupulous landlords, Blackpool Housing Company is a further challenge to the private rented sector to drive up its own standards.

“We’re effectively a disruptor, we are saying to the private rented sector, unless you can meet these minimum standards you are going to find it difficult. Our minimum standards are probably the minimum for new places coming on to the marketplace.” 

Lee Burrell, Blackpool Housing Company

An added benefit is that Blackpool Housing Company employs mainly local SMEs for the refurbishment. Of 180 workers on its portfolio, Burrell says around 170 are from the local FY postcode. “That’s important for our shareholder, which pushes us hard.”

Targeting empty properties to solve housing crisis
Another council to come up with local responses is Calderdale, where there were 9,773 households on the waiting list in June and the main cause of homelessness is the end of a private tenancy.

Scott Patient, Calderdale Council deputy leader and cabinet member for climate action and housing, says that’s why it’s been so important to have a local housing plan, passed last year. Only 21 per cent of councils have passed a new or revised local plan in the last five years, a slowdown on previous years, according to estate agents Savills.

Council stock was transferred in 2000 and although the Labour-run authority would like to build more social homes itself, that’s not a priority, says Patient. Instead, the local plan – unsuccessfully contested in judicial review by Clifton Neighbourhood Forum because of concern about transport impacts – envisages 10,000 new homes built by the private and social sectors into the 2030s.

There is space for that target, says Patient – Calderdale has about half the population of neighbouring Kirklees but in a similar area. But there isn’t space for much more than that, because of the borough’s challenging terrain, with steep hills, mining legacy and culverts.

But he adds that Calderdale has adopted a focus on bringing back its 1,500 empty homes into use. Some are in a poor state, have been land-banked by developers or are in the social sector and part of a regeneration plan that’s been delayed.

Using powers in the 2012 Local Government Finance Act, Calderdale Council now applies the maximum charge of 200 per cent council tax on homes left empty for one year – down from two years – with 400 per cent tax payable on homes empty for 10 years or more.

The council has also worked with a probate researcher and genealogy company, Fraser & Fraser, to identify family members of deceased owners and speed up the return of properties to the market, as well as using compulsory purchase orders. It says the number of long-term empty homes in Calderdale fell by 12 per cent in the year to 2023 – the second biggest reduction in the region.

“That’s an example of us thinking outside the box to make sure there’s capacity in the system,” says Patient. “It’s not just abut building new homes – it’s about making those that are either in poor condition good or that are currently unoccupied, occupied.”

Councillors on the place scrutiny board also want to press banks to accept tenants’ rent payment records when they apply for mortgages. Many do not, but the Skipton Building Society now does.

Patient believes Calderdale is well set if Rayner comes through on her promises on housing. Rachel Reeves’s Budget last month brought some spending commitments, with more likely in the government’s spending review next year.

The Chancellor’s Budget included a £500 million top-up to the Homes England affordable housing programme, consultation on a new rent settlement for housing providers, and changes to the Right to Buy scheme, reducing the discount and allowing councils to keep 100 per cent of receipts.

That covered some of the items on a list presented to the Treasury in the run-up to the Budget by the Northern Housing Consortium, whose members own or manage 90 per cent of socially rented homes in the North.

The boost to the affordable housing programme is welcomed by Patrick Murray, Northern Housing Consortium policy and public affairs director, but there is a “real issue” about whether the programme will be extended beyond its current lifespan, due to end in 2025-26.

A proposed rent rise for social housing of 1 per cent above inflation for five years will release investment, says Murray, although he acknowledges it’s a difficult policy because it means higher costs for tenants. Allowing councils to keep Right to Buy receipts is a “big thing that will lead in an immediate sense to more social housing”.

Overall, the Budget “shows a government that is at least listening and engaging”, says Murray. “Let’s bank the wins.”

But the spending review will be vital to add long-term certainty for housing providers. Housing associations and local authorities work to 30 year business plans on housing, he points out, and have to balance their requirements to build new homes, adapt to stricter maintenance and repair regulation brought in since Ishak’s death, and increase decarbonisation.

The legacy of years of enforced rent reductions in the social housing sector and the government’s insistence that providers focus on new homes means maintenance got cut back. The 1960s social housing boom has brought a “legacy stock issue”.

“The spending review is important to allow the long-term stuff for affordable housing, decarbonisation and support for regeneration,” says Murray. “If you can give them a window of certainty they can lock in finance more cheaply.”

This article is a joint publication by The Lead North and our Brick by Brick campaign, which seeks to shine a light on the social housing crisis across the country.

Through personal stories and a closer look at local initiatives, we aim to highlight the very real impact of this issue and the urgent need for reform in social housing, better tenant protections, and a comprehensive strategy to meet the housing demand.

As the debate continues at the national level, we must also recognize the experiences of those on the ground, like Barry, who face daily struggles as a result of inadequate housing solutions. Our campaign calls for bold action to secure safe, affordable, and sustainable housing for everyone.