Council housing, once the bedrock of the housing system — providing secure and cheap tenure — is in shockingly short supply. According to the National Housing Federation, 1.6 million households are languishing on the waiting list — more than the number of households in the North-East — while all of England only managed to deliver a pitiful 8,900 council homes in 2021-22. Only 2,500 of these were for social rent, the traditional rent level for social housing, with the remainder at higher-cost tenures.
In the same period, the UK also sold off or demolished around 20,000 social homes, with 14,000 council homes sold off under the Right to Buy scheme. Over the years, Right to Buy has led to some 3 million homes being lost from the social housing stock. With millions in need of secure and affordable homes, rebuilding the council stock is a vital step — perhaps the most vital — in confronting the housing emergency. Council housing offers secure, lifelong tenancies and rent levels far below that of the private sector and most Housing Association properties, with the homes remaining in public hands, owned by us.
Amid this backdrop of depleted social housing, Sadiq Khan unveiled his ‘Right to Buy Back’ scheme in 2021, which has subsidised London councils to purchase homes from the private sector for use as council housing. This has allowed for former private sector homes to be added to the council housing stock, so long as the homes meet or are brought up to the Decent Homes Standard. In its first year, the scheme managed to facilitate the purchase of 1500 homes — a long way from what is needed to meet the city’s social housing needs, but almost as many council homes as were built across the rest of England last year.
London
London mayor Sadiq Khan signalled a move away from demolition not backed by residents in 2018, declaring that estate regeneration schemes need to obtain support through mandatory ballots. Since then, high profile plans to demolish architecturally acclaimed estates Cressingham Gardens and Central Hill have been "paused" by Lambeth Council after an independent review by the late crossbench peer Bob Kerslake recommended a "fundamental reset" to the council's handling of the redevelopments.
Sentiment is also moving sharply against what is known as the "cross-subsidy" approach to regeneration that has dominated in the past two decades, in which council estates are demolished to make way for expensive for-sale properties that in turn fund building a proportion of more affordable homes. The model was declared "bust" by housing association leaders as far back as 2019, before the economic downturn left thousands of apartments unsold across developments in London.
While plans for demolition come under scrutiny, more emphasis is being placed on infill development, such as Camden's rejuvenation of the post-war Kiln Place social housing estate. Working with the London Borough of Camden, Peter Barber Architects upgraded the whole estate and increased its density without demolishing any existing homes.