A decent home is a fundamental right.
In 1981, 36% of Leicester’s 98,500 housing stock was owned by Leicester City Council. In 2017, of Leicester’s 135,000 housing stock, the council owned only 15.5%. This reduction, caused by the Right to Buy scheme introduced by the Tories in the 1980s, was designed to increase home ownership. Since then, two things have happened: housing has become increasingly unaffordable and the Tory policy has failed.
In 1981, 50% of Leicester’s housing was occupied by its owner. In 2017, this figure is still 50%. One in 10 homes in 1981 were privately rented. It’s almost one in four now and rising. For someone on an average Leicester wage almost none of the city’s housing stock is affordable to buy. Renting is often the only option and private rents are likely to account for a third of your income. It is widely thought that a fair ratio of rent to income is 25%. And while a lot of private landlords are responsible landlords, we know from bitter experience that many are not. Tory council house policy has failed to bring about more home ownership and instead has facilitated a growth in the number of private landlords. It is a policy that has provided profit for the few and not enough homes for the many.
Meanwhile – and not surprisingly – Leicester City Council has 6,000 individuals and families waiting for council housing. .
Labour in Leicester will intervene. We will build new council homes and buy properties that can be used as council homes. We will continue to enable social housing companies to build more social housing. This will provide Leicester with 1,500 new council, social and extra care (supported living) homes by 2023. With a Labour government’s National Investment Fund, this figure could be considerably higher. For now, however, we will use our newly-acquired housing borrowing capacity and new housing company to drive the most significant growth in social housing seen in the city since the 1980s. We believe Leicester City Council is the city’s best landlord, investing in homes, providing secure tenancies and demonstrating incredibly low eviction rates. We want to be able to provide decent homes for many more people.
Not everyone has a home, of course. Too many sofa-surf; too many families are split up across spare rooms, too many people sleep rough on our streets. We prevented more than 1,400 families and 2,300 individuals from becoming homeless in 2017/18, but clearly we weren’t able to help everyone. We recognise that the council alone cannot resolve rough sleeping so will continue to work with our partners in the city to reduce rough sleeping and improve our offer of support over the next term.
WHAT WE’VE ACHIEVED
In 2015 Labour in Leicester promised to:
- Build new homes, including council housing and affordable family homes for rent
- Buy and bring empty homes back into use
- Provide safe, decent, healthy homes for council tenants
- Introduce a licensing scheme for landlords
- Tackle homelessness.
We have
Built New Homes
- Supported, since 2011, 7,000 new homes to be built in Leicester. Of these, 1,000 were classified as affordable, making the city one of the top 10 local authorities for new builds – but even with this fantastic effort, we know this does not meet the city’s need. A further 4,500 new homes are on the way at Waterside and Ashton Green.
- Brought back into use more than 800 empty homes between 2015 and 2019
- Encouraged city centre housing development, recognising that city’s wider footprint is limited and the centre represents arguably the best opportunity to secure more homes
Supported our tenants
- Since 2002, we’ve spent more than £400m on improving our council homes
- In 2018/19 alone, we expect to make 90,000 responsive repairs
- 2,700 tenants per year get tenancy sustainment support and we only undertake roughly 20 evictions per year from our 21,000 tenancies
- 923 homes have been provided with energy-efficient heating systems and insulation
- We carried out loft and cavity insulation upgrades on more than 3,750 council homes
- Post-Grenfell, we have inspected external façades of 350 buildings in the city. Four council tower blocks were fully refurbished and this year we are spending £1.35m on retro-fitting sprinkler systems in four tower blocks.
Tackled homelessness and rough sleeping
- In 17/18, we helped more than 2,000 individuals and 1,150 families into accommodation
- Redesigned our support offer for people who are sleeping rough – establishing a day centre and providing a
better co-ordinated offer of housing, health and employment - Worked closely with the police and not criminalised aspects of rough sleeping, as has happened in other parts of the UK.
WHAT WE’LL DO
Labour in Leicester will
- Provide 1,500 more council, social and extra care homes
- Establish a private landlord licensing scheme to better regulate landlords in the parts of the city where there is the greatest concentration of private rented homes – a process that is already under way
- Establish an effective space standard policy for the city to prevent ‘rabbit hutch’ developments
- Provide free wifi on council estates
- Undertake an ongoing £80m council home improvement programme
- Establish a home extension fund for council tenants to reduce overcrowding in council properties
- Continue our environmental investment programme on council land and estates
- Maintain our existing adaptation services for all homeowners and undertake a programme of council housing adaptations to allow disabled people to remain or move into our properties
- Ensure that no-one has to sleep rough on our streets
- Establish a residential facility for people experiencing multiple and complex needs, many of whom are rough sleeping
- Support further work to meet complex needs experienced by women and BAME communities who may not be sleeping on our streets but are homeless.
A Labour government would
- Invest enough in Leicester to ensure the city meets its national housing targets
- Reduce the number of families and individuals placed in temporary accommodation