House of Commons Council Housing Group

HOUSE OF COMMONS
COUNCIL HOUSING GROUP

Council Housing: Time to Invest

Fair funding, investment and building council housing - our report to the Government Review of Council Housing Finance

Introduction
Ministers launched a 'Review of Council Housing Finance' in 2007 with the promise to "ensure that we have a sustainable, long term system for financing council housing" and "consider evidence about the need to spend on management, maintenance and repairs". The Housing Minister is now also consulting on new rules that will enable local authorities to start building new council housing again.

To influence the outcome of these consultations our group issued a call for evidence to identify the level of funding required to manage, maintain, repair and improve existing council housing and to start building a third generation of first class council homes.

We have received written evidence from a wide range of organisations. On 25th February 200 tenants, elected councillors, council officers, trade unionists and academics took part in our inquiry session at Westminster. We heard verbal evidence from 26 delegations during the day.

To take the debate forward we are publishing a series of interim papers with the aim of printing a full report. We welcome comments and call for additional evidence to strengthen the arguments. We hope to maintain the dialogue we have started with Margaret Beckett and have also asked to meet the Prime Minister to put the case.

If you would like to contribute to this 'work in progress' please send submissions to my office.
Austin Mitchell MP, chair House of Commons Council Housing group
House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA.
Phone 020 7219 4450

Email to: info@support4councilhousing.org.uk and riggsj@parliament.uk

Report from our first inquiry in 2004/5
4 page summary		40 page full report

'Council House Building'
Early Day Motion 355
(EDM 355) in Parliament
Ask your MP to sign this motion in Parliament to support our campaign. Email your MP and get organisations and individuals to lobby MPs.

Download interim papers and feedback your comments and provide new/additional evidence to support the argument

Introduction	Case for council housing	Fully funding allowances: calculating ‘level of need’

The money's there: debt write-off, gap funding and receipts	Ring-fencing the money that belongs to council housing	Housing finance: national HRA or self-financing

Building a third generation of first class council housing	Fair and balanced debate	Case against privatisation