The coalition helped bury an enduring and dangerous myth in a major report into the country’s chronic housing crisis released this week. The year-long probe rubbishes the idea councils are stopped from building new homes by Treasury ‘caps’ on their borrowing powers.
As research published on Coffee House revealed last year, the idea caps hold them back is a distracting myth, perpetuated by special interest groups and parroted by columnists like the Guardian’s Owen Jones.
All this bellyaching about borrowing ‘restrictions’ continues, led largely by Tom Copley, Labour’s housing spokesperson in City Hall and the Labour-led Local Government Association.
The real barriers to town halls getting their oars back into house building is lack of development nous and a ‘can’t-do’ affliction, brought on by funding cuts. Here is what Keith House, the Liberal Democrat leader of Eastleigh Council and joint author of the report said at the launch:
‘I have been regularly briefed by the Local Government Association that the issue is a shortage of money.
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