Communist candidate calls for ‘Homes for the people, not the profiteers’
Simon Brignell, the Communist Party candidate in Abbey Ward, has called for a radical change in housing policy to meet the local crisis in access to homes, the failure to build new homes and to curb the power of so-called ‘developers’.
The Communist Party claims that Britain’s housing market is broken and calls “for an integrated strategy which meets the needs of the people, gives power to local communities, delivering good quality, genuinely affordable homes that contribute to solving the climate emergency.”
The Party has produced a Charter for Housing which calls for an overhaul of housing planning, finance and subsidy rules; abolition of homelessness, a return to building social homes at scale; proper regulation and enforcement of the private rented sector and housing standards, recreation of council 'design and build' capacity with a huge expansion of apprenticeships in construction and proper democratic control of place-making. It requires workforce planning, changes to legislation and a willingness to utilise the powers that local authorities have to restore genuine control of place-making to local communities.
Says Simon, “We need to ensure that all housing development and place-making is undertaken on the basis of assessed need and locally agreed plans. At the moment, developers can do what they like and are reshaping our landscape and communities without any consultation or oversight.”
Communists call for a change in the basis of housing subsidy to favour supply of public sector homes and in areas of development, to amend planning policy to maximise the proportion of social housing. This should be reinforced by a ban on any further sale of public land to private developers and abolition of the ‘Right to Buy’. It also calls for “Repeal of the hated Bedroom Tax and the restoration of full housing benefit for all under 35s."
On Climate, the Party calls for “Developing a programme to retro-fit existing housing to improve thermal and energy efficiency and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.”
On home building Simon is calling for, "the reintroduction of directly employed building and maintenance departments, so that jobs and apprenticeships are available to young people in local communities, with trade union rates of pay. This alone is the guarantee of quality building.”
The Communist Party campaigns for a freeze on social housing rents for 12 months with rent set at rates that are genuinely in line with local incomes. In the private sector it calls for a cap on rents ’subject to a national maximum’ and for full regulation of the private rented sector, including rent controls and compulsory registration with sufficient funding for local authorities to enforce minimum housing standards.
The party recognises that change will not come unless a combination of workers in housing, local government with tenants and homeowners, combine to force democratic change. Tenants, residents groups and trade unions need to develop local plans for housing and campaign, wherever possible, with the support of local councils.
These should “reject the concreting over of our local landscape, the forced relocation of long standing communities as a result of high rents and home prices and campaign for housing stock that contributes, through high quality design, to relieving pressure on the environment."