Sajid Javid’s spending round was too little, too late for local councils (first appeared on Labour List)

For Labour in local government, on the frontlines of fighting austerity and protecting our most vulnerable residents from the worst of Tory cuts, we know that even the pre-election splash of the cash in Sajid Javid’s spending round this week does not reverse the damaging cuts over the last nine years. It is simply too little, too late.

Local government has faced a cut of 60p for every £1 the last Labour government was spending on local government. My own borough of Hackney has faced a £140m cut to our central government grant, working out at £529 per resident, and before these announcements we were predicting that we would still have a further £30m of savings to find over the next two years.

This, alongside the cuts to other public services, has increased demand on local authorities services as people are impacted by pressures on the NHS, police services and damaging welfare reforms. But the overall £3.5bn increase for local government announced this week isn’t all new money – it assumes council tax and business rate rises and represents in many areas just a continuation of existing temporary grants.

The Chancellor was keen to announce a short-term £1.5bn funding boost for social care to cover this government’s failings to publish a social care green paper, plan for a sustainable future for social care funding and help people in desperate need of good quality care, which we know would relieve pressure on the NHS. But in reality, a third of the one-off spending would be funded by a 2% council tax increase, and it does not cover the overall £2.5bn gap in social care funding.

The extra money for schools is welcome and has only been won because of the hard work of campaigners, the unions and the Labour Party in highlighting the growing crisis in our schools. But it should not take the funding situation to get so bad – with teachers having to ask parents to help pay for school supplies, and some funding it out of their own pay packets – for the Tories to act. Even now some estimates still show real terms cuts to Hackney’s schools, and it comes after a pay offer that has not been fully funded and other pressures such as business rate increases that have already stretched so many school budgets especially in high need areas. On SEND, further one-off funding of £800m – half the amount councils need.

There were also considerable gaps in the Tories’ spin, which did not address the real crisis situation that some of our most vulnerable residents are in. They could have returned some decency to the welfare system by lifting the punitive housing benefit caps, or used the 100th anniversary of the first Housing Act to announce grant funding for councils to build the desperately needed social homes for the country’s nearly 300,000 homeless families. Instead, they announced £54m for homelessness for the whole country. Hackney alone is spending that amount to support homeless families in our borough.

They could have recognised the need for a meaningful commitment to a new green economy, with many Labour councils declaring a climate emergency this year and resourcing plans to reach net-carbon-neutral public services. Instead of listening while the world’s lungs burn, they announced a pitiful £30m to the Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs, nowhere near enough to meet their own net-carbon-neutral target by 2050.

But they chose to do none of these things, because austerity has always been a choice to keep tax for the few as low as possible and damaging services for the many in the process. Rather than a “new chapter for our public services”, austerity continues as councils like Hackney still face a budget challenge as need rises, and the situation is much worse across the country. We also need to be clear that we wouldn’t have even got this extra funding if it hadn’t been for the hard work of Labour at the LGA working with our front bench teams.

Finally, it is important to remember that school funding is the only announcement detailing new money for three years or more, with every other announcement being repackaged spending lasting for only one year. The Tories are preparing for a general election, and this is part of their strategy as they realise voters are tired of austerity. In reality, we know that only a Labour government will rebuild Britain, not just offer one off crumbs from the Treasury this side of the election and further cuts if the Tories get back into power.

It seems even these budget sweeteners are not sweet enough to keep Boris Johnson’s own brother on board, let alone the public. Christmas at the Johnsons’ should be fun.

(This article first appeared on Labour List and can still be found there: https://labourlist.org/2019/09/sajid-javids-spending-round-was-too-little-too-late-for-local-councils/)

Large-scale house building doesn’t have to mean sacrificing quality (first appeared on Labour List)

This year, Hackney is marking two anniversaries in the history of social housing. The first is the 100 year anniversary of the Housing and Planning Act 1919, popularly known as the Addison Act after the Shoreditch Liberal (and then Labour) MP and Minister Christopher Addison. This act ushered in ‘Homes fit for Heroes’ and the first era of council house building in Hackney, many of which are still standing today. It set out a clear sense of national mission that only returned under the 1945 Labour government and, despite all the Macmillan rhetoric, our weakened Tory architects of the current housing crisis have singularly failed to match.

A more contemporary anniversary is also being marked. It is ten years since, under Labour, Hackney returned to this legacy and started to directly build council housing again. This was only possible given the financial and policy freedoms of the last Labour government, led by John Healey, then Housing Minister (now our excellent Shadow Secretary), who started the Local Authority New Build Programme.

We have learnt a lot in the past ten years, from how to give residents a meaningful voice in the building and design of their new homes to continuing to fly the, dare I say it, ‘red flag’ of council housing when many on the left and in the sector abandoned real council housing under Tory and Lib Dem attacks.

Social house-building has never been more important. That is why, despite little support from central government, Labour in Hackney is building thousands of council homes. Our in-house direct delivery programme, which focuses on us building council homes on council land, is delivering – to date we have built 912 homes across the borough. 62% of these hundreds of new council homes delivered between 2010 and 2018 are genuinely affordable – either for social rent or shared ownership. All were directly built and funded by the council, and will continue to be managed by it on council-owned land.

We are creating modern, high-quality, well-designed and spacious council housing that is built to last. Crucially, these homes are in mixed communities with the same high-quality lobbies and entrances for all residents, no segregation of public space or facilities, retaining ownership and management whether you are a private buyer or new council tenant.

We also continue to innovate developing an in-house non-profit estate agent Hackney Sales, which ensures our shared ownership homes or private sales homes (that we still need to sell to invest in council housing) are marketed and sold to local people first. At King’s Crescent, working with our construction partner, we ensured that none of the private sale homes were sold to foreign investor buyers and 97% went to owner-occupiers. We’ve made good on the idea of ‘first dibs’ for Londoners, and attracted international attention in the New York Times.

Frankly, compared to much of the social housing that was built in the past two decades, we are firmly saying that social tenants deserve the very best good quality homes. They deserve homes that would be the envy of any luxury developer brochure, but at true council rents and tenancies. Learning some of the clear lessons from our own past that we cannot afford to sacrifice quality for volume is something that a future Labour government committed to volume public housing delivery will need to learn from pioneering Labour councils like Hackney.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t acutely aware that Hackney residents are at the forefront of the capital’s housing crisis. In Hackney alone, it is a sad reality that there are currently more than 13,000 families waiting for a council home. More than 3,000 of these are living in temporary accommodation.

Following the support that the mayor of London has provided through the ‘Building Council Homes for Londoners’ fund, this month we will set out where we’ll be delivering over 100 more council homes for social rent than we could have without this desperately needed funding – homes that would otherwise have been for shared ownership or outright sale. That means 100 more families living in new, modern, high-quality council homes.

I am proud that as mayor, Hackney’s Labour council will more than triple its record of housebuilding over the previous two terms ─ under our 2018 manifesto we will directly deliver nearly 2,000 new homes, three schools and a new leisure centre. Over half of the new housing will be genuinely affordable – for social rent and shared ownership – and, just as importantly, these homes will be high quality and built to last. These homes are for local people and are designed in partnership with them, following the principles in the mayor of London’s Estate Regeneration Good Practice Guide, which Hackney’s approach helped to shape.

Our approach is focused on placebuilding ─ on building good quality homes that stand the test of time and that all our residents can be proud of. Alongside high quality architecture, we prioritise the highest environmental standards including plans to integrate new localised energy generation into a council-owned company. We also ensure that the London Living Wage is paid in the supply chain, create new apprenticeships and embed local recruitment through Hackney Works.

This month, we are also laying out how we will invest in new affordable work space, held by the council in perpetuity. We’ll make sure that the new developments we create address not just housing inequality, but economic inequality too ─ helping to bridge the gap and build a more inclusive local economy.

Rather than just talking about building homes, we are doing it. We as Labour must be proud of the ambitions of the past, channeling them into a new era of Labour-led public housing delivery, while avoiding some of the pitfalls by putting people and quality at the heart of everything we do. What better way of marking 100 years of local council housing than by uniting to win the local elections in May and making certain that mayor Khan is re-elected next year in London. We are clearly showing the difference that Labour in power can make and laying the building blocks for a radical Labour government that will truly invest in council housing – so that boroughs like Hackney are able to do even more.

This piece was commissioned by Tom Copley, who is guest editing LabourList today.

(This article first appeared on Labour List and can be still be found there: https://labourlist.org/2019/04/large-scale-house-building-doesnt-have-to-mean-sacrificing-quality/)