The Policy Exchange report Ending Expensive Social Tenancies has predictably provoked a renewed debate about council housing and the value of genuinely mixed communities. It was welcomed by the right as providing a potential narrative for ending the automatic claim of the working and non-working poor to live in more salubrious neighbourhoods, whilst some on the left have attacked it as a fundamental attack on the very notion of council housing.
On the basis of my experience as leader of Southwark Council – the largest social landlord in London – I believe the report actually presents us with an opportunity to start talking about what we want our social housing to deliver in future decades, and whether it is time to challenge the direction of so-called ‘affordable housing’.
In Southwark we are making some fairly radical use of our property in order to meet our commitments to bring each one of our council homes up to our own standards for being dry, warm and safe and to build 1,000 new council homes by 2020.
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