Council Housing sell-off will undermine Low Carbon drive

I've been at a GovNet conference in Westminster today : "Low Carbon Communities 2012". A couple of high-ranking civil servants were telling us about government plans for adapting existing housing stock to improve their carbon efficiency. They spoke about the need to improve the homes of those in danger of fuel poverty, and the cost advantages of large-scale programmes.

I asked how the proposed government sell-off of council properties at a discount of 50% was going to help. Oxford is tightly bounded by Green Belt and intersected by rivers and flood plain -- there is little prospect of building replacement affordable housing within the city boundary with the receipts from council house sales because (a) land is scarce and (b) what there is is being snapped up by developers for speculative student accommodation. We have an affordable housing crisis and it's a seller's market in property . . prices are high and rents astronomical. Council housing stock is offered at a genuinely affordable rent, and the council has been upgrading its properties steadily, installing exterior cladding to improve its carbon efficiency... in other words doing everything the government wants to see happen.

The housing sell-off is likely to result in the loss to private ownership of well over half our housing stock, and much of that will end up privately rented, I would guess.

The spokesperson for the Homes & Communities Agency said she was extremely glad I hadn't asked her the question from the floor during the plenary, as she'd have had trouble answering it. She clearly had concerns. The spokeswoman from the National Housing Federation said that the Federation was opposed to the proposal. They couldn't see how it could work. And the Director from the Sustainable Buildings Division of the Department for Communities and Local Government simply didn't answer the question, but blanked it.

The council housing sell-off is nothing short of a disaster. It's an idea driven by a Thatcherite ideology which failed utterly last time it was tried. You used to be able to spot the bought council houses -- they had new front doors. Now you spot them (at least in Oxford) because they're looking a bit tatty, a lot are rented, and they stand out from the well-maintained, insulation-clad council properties. I really can't understand it : in straight business terms, as what could I suppose be called a social enterprise, council housing ticks all the boxes.