• THE much-anticipated, and delayed, government Social Housing Green Paper should have been a chance for the new secretary of state James Brokenshire to make a break from past missed opportunities.

Mr Brokenshire has talked honestly and with apparent understanding about the housing crisis and the need for real action. It is therefore all the more disappointing that the Green Paper is a damp squib when it comes to new policy that will make any difference to the housing crisis.

While it is welcome that the final nail has been hammered in the coffin of the government’s 2016 plans to force councils to sell off “high value” council homes – something I and many others have campaigned against and which housing charity Shelter said would have seen as many as 23,000 council homes sold off in a year – it’s hard to celebrate.

There was not a single penny of new funding to build new council homes. There was no announcement that Right to Buy will be fixed, so that homes lost are replaced like for like in the same area.

The government failed to announce its support for the single simplest policy it could adopt, which would help councils build thousands of new homes and would cost the government absolutely nothing – lifting the red-tape that stops councils from borrowing to build.

The artificial cap on councils’ ability to borrow to build new council homes is maddening. The reason the government won’t change its position is because the UK is one of the only countries in Europe that counts such borrowing as part of national debt.

A simple change in accounting policy would allow councils to borrow prudently, and at record-low costs, to finance the building of thousands of council homes, repaying the borrowing through rents on the new homes.

Islington is building more council homes now than we have for the last 30 years. But without significant government investment or the lifting of the borrowing cap for councils, our ambitions to fight the housing crisis face yet more hurdles.

CLLR DIARMAID WARD
Labour executive member for housing, Islington Council