The newly elected Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has revealed plans to build 10,000 council homes over the next 4 years to tackle the housing crisis
The Mayor also pledged that he would suspend any of those new homes being sold as part of the right to buy scheme
He plans to work with pub;ic bodies to release brown field land adding that his social homes would be a “new generation of council homes which will be cheaper to run”.
Writing in the Guardian this morning he said:
“There’s no point us building houses if people sell them off cheaply to no public benefit. It’s like running a bath with no plug“
Burnham emphisided that he would only be suspending the right to buy as he felt that everybody should have the right to buy their own home.However he added that the region was currently losing around 500 properties per year from its housing stock because of the right to buy
He told BBC Breakfast “I’m saying to Whitehall and Westminster – you need to allow us to suspend Right to Buy from the new homes that we are building because if we don’t, trying to solve the housing crisis is like trying to fill a bath but with the plug out because you try and build new homes but you lose them at the other end.”
The Mayor also pledged that he would bring in a landlord’s charter across the region which would give tenants of private rented housing a right to request a property check
A trial,he added would be brought in later this year
Access to social housing is essential to many residents in Greater Manchester, as capped rent increases provide some protection to tenants against the soaring rents seen in the private rented sector.
The average rental price of a two-bed property in Manchester increased by 12.5% between February 2023-24, against an England average of 8.9%. Limiting access to affordable social housing can therefore help fuel a rise in housing insecurity, homelessness, and families in temporary accommodation.
The new ‘Housing First’ approach aims to address the main challenges for housing in Greater Manchester – poor living standards, especially in the private rented sector and low availability of truly-affordable housing – by implementing a collaborative, multi-agency approach that can address issues by developing tailored, whole-system solutions.
