Andy Burnham gets it. In his conference speech last month, the prime minister committed to “the biggest council housebuilding programme since the war”. Through Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy policy, some 2 million council houses have been sold. Meanwhile, social housebuilding in England is at its lowest rate in decades.
The private sector won’t solve the UK’s housing crisis. It never has.
It was only when the government fully took responsibility for the quality of housing as well as the quantity that slums were cleared and new housing built. The figures are stark, with government statistics showing the vital contribution council housing made through the decades.
This Labour government has set itself the target of building 300,000 homes a year – a number that has been reached only for a few years in the 1960s, when council house building was at its peak. A new programme of council house building is the only way Andy Burnham can deliver on his promise. But how?