Corbyn promises 'radical reboot' of council house building to tackle housing crisis

cepheus

Jeremy Corbyn would 'reboot' council house building and cap soaring private sector rents to combat the housing crisis if he was elected Prime Minister. The Labour leadership front-runner says councils should be allowed to commission and build houses themselves, instead of being forced to put construction out to tender for private companies.....He also pledges licensing of private landlords, and giving tenants the right to longer tenancies.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyn-promises-radical-reboot-6202338 …

and some Tories are cynically joining Labour and voting for Corbyn in the cynical view he's unelectable. Could they end up kicking themselves.

If Corbyn is unelectable it's only because of the mass media propaganda against him, and that's just from his Labour colleagues. The bottom line is that his policies aren't only popular with Labour voters but many others including top economists, and more importantly cynical non voters in previous elections.

ruggedtoast

I am enjoying seeing the other leadership hopefuls squirming. They may as well be running for Tory leadership.

Labour seems to have totally ignored the excitement about Sturgeon and decided that Ed lost because he was too left wing, which gives them carte blanche to dig up all the hateful, Murdoch courting,Blairism of the past.

Ed didn't lose because he was left wing. He lost because he needed a focus group to say anything and couldn't even a win a debate about redistribution of wealth against Mylene flipping Klass.

martinsurrey

cepheus wrote: »

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyn-promises-radical-reboot-6202338 …

and some Tories are cynically joining Labour and voting for Corbyn in the cynical view he's unelectable. Could they end up kicking themselves.

If Corbyn is unelectable it's only because of the mass media propaganda against him, and that's just from his Labour colleagues. The bottom line is that his policies aren't only popular with Labour voters but many others including top economists, and more importantly cynical non voters in previous elections.

I could say that if I'm elected I'll make sure everyone is driving an Aston Martin, unfortunately I'd be found to be unable to deliver what I promise, as talk is cheap.

Sure we'd all like free houses and cheap rent, but someone has to pay for it all.

Take this councils building their own houses.

Where would they build them?

On Greenbelt... no, as its the council (via the planning department) who stand in the way of developing there.

On Brownfield... Who pays for the £millions of land re mediation and other costs, it can take 10 years to get from identifying a site to building a house, have they got the political will to say that £20m of the councils cash will be tied up for a decade before you see a single house?

Not to mention, do they have the skills and staff to even consider doing complex projects like these?

stator

If he wins I might even support Labour for once.

CLAPTON

yes we need more housing in the SE and other hotspots

there is plenty of money to build them as evidenced by the price (i.e. house prices greatly exceed the building costs): the problem is land and planning permission and other council/government imposed costs and in some case mortgage availability.

So if Corbyn is going to brush aside these issues and free up the planning process and abolish the artificial costs government impose on new builds then I may vote for him too.

If however, he is going to dogmatically develop a direct labour building outfit and then allocate the houses built to labour ghetttos then that won't be so good.

cells

martinsurrey wrote: »

I could say that if I'm elected I'll make sure everyone is driving an Aston Martin, unfortunately I'd be found to be unable to deliver what I promise, as talk is cheap.

Sure we'd all like free houses and cheap rent, but someone has to pay for it all.

Take this councils building their own houses.

Where would they build them?

On Greenbelt... no, as its the council (via the planning department) who stand in the way of developing there.

On Brownfield... Who pays for the £millions of land re mediation and other costs, it can take 10 years to get from identifying a site to building a house, have they got the political will to say that £20m of the councils cash will be tied up for a decade before you see a single house?

Not to mention, do they have the skills and staff to even consider doing complex projects like these?

The council's stand in the way of private house building they won't stand in the way if their own bosses and will just wave through the plans

All the council needs to do is 'zone' a parcel of land and give it a designation eg 50 homes. Then just tender out the contract and oay for it via completed homes. So a builder might say ok ill build you all 50 and keep 25. Another might offer ill build you all 50 but keep 20 etc. Let them deal with the design and workload. If you don't like the finished product you wont use em again and they will want the lots of repeate business as the coucils would be tendering out 2 such plots a month

the_flying_pig

More council housing is by a very long distance the best way forward.

Corbyn does seem to be doing a good job just in 'energizing' this debate. Apart from anything else he's simply too old for the gig (a septuagenarian fighting a modern General election campaign? Get real) but he can play an important part nonetheless.

martinsurrey

cells wrote: »

The council's stand in the way of private house building they won't stand in the way if their own bosses and will just wave through the plans

All the council needs to do is 'zone' a parcel of land and give it a designation eg 50 homes. Then just tender out the contract and oay for it via completed homes. So a builder might say ok ill build you all 50 and keep 25. Another might offer ill build you all 50 but keep 20 etc. Let them deal with the design and workload. If you don't like the finished product you wont use em again and they will want the lots of repeate business as the coucils would be tendering out 2 such plots a month

so what your saying is tender the contract to build the houses to the private sector, exactly like happens now...

around the corner from me is a derelict office building owned by the local council.

the department that owns it tried to get planning for 100% affordable housing with shops below, they got a company to deal with designs. It got refused by planning as the only people willing to build the affordable for them wanted a convenience shop below (so Tesco get the shop and the council gets the apartments as affordable rent houses). The planners said no as they didn't want a Tesco there, no one else would touch the project, still derelict.

I think you overestimate the ability and sanity of local council

CLAPTON

martinsurrey wrote: »

so what your saying is tender the contract to build the houses to the private sector, exactly like happens now...

around the corner from me is a derelict office building owned by the local council.

the department that owns it tried to get planning for 100% affordable housing with shops below, they got a company to deal with designs. It got refused by planning as the only people willing to build the affordable for them wanted a convenience shop below (so Tesco get the shop and the council gets the apartments as affordable rent houses). The planners said no as they didn't want a Tesco there, no one else would touch the project, still derelict.

I think you overestimate the ability and sanity of local council

no you misunderstand what tendering means

martinsurrey

CLAPTON wrote: »

no you misunderstand what tendering means

Tender

"make a formal written offer to carry out work, supply goods, or buy land, shares, or another asset for a stated fixed price."

currently the council tenders for a developer to

1)buy the land, and agree to build a certain number of affordable houses to be sold to an HA housing trust as part of the contract (in addition to the usual HA requirement for planning (eg 50% HA instead of the planning documents usual 25%)
2) enter a JV agreement with a developer, by which the developer will submit plans on behalf of the council and then build the plans for either cash or for a share of sales proceeds (depends on the scheme)

how is this different from tendering as detailed in the post I quoted.. at the end of the day, the work will be done by the private sector, much as it is now, and so, costs wont fall, without a significant decrease in planning restrictions, which will benefit the private sector as well, who have the expertise and knowledge to implement schemes.

MS1950

CLAPTON wrote: »

yes we need more housing in the SE and other hotspots

there is plenty of money to build them as evidenced by the price (i.e. house prices greatly exceed the building costs): the problem is land and planning permission and other council/government imposed costs and in some case mortgage availability.

So if Corbyn is going to brush aside these issues and free up the planning process and abolish the artificial costs government impose on new builds then I may vote for him too.

If however, he is going to dogmatically develop a direct labour building outfit and then allocate the houses built to labour ghetttos then that won't be so good.

Well here's an apparently 'prize winning' alternative view published by the Adam Smith Institute promoting 'sweeping deregulation'......

But I'm not entirely sure whether it's intended to be satire or not....?

http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/planning-transport/britain-needs-more-slums/