The District Councils’ Network (DCN) has published a new report today, which proposes three reforms that the organisation claims could provide 100,000 affordable homes.
DCN housing spokesperson Hannah Dalton said the proposed measures could ‘bring about a step change’ in ending the housing crisis across England.
The first proposal is for a change in law that would mean councils only have to set up a Housing Revenue Account once they have 1,000 social homes, with the DCN arguing that the current threshold of 200 homes ‘piles administration costs onto councils who would otherwise be enthusiastic social housing builders’.
This is seen by the organisation as the most impactful proposal, with the report projecting that it could result in an extra 88,000 council homes in district areas.
As its second proposal, the DCN calls on the Government to close planning loopholes that allow developers to side-step commitments to include affordable housing in new developments, projecting this would lead to 8,300 new affordable homes a year.
The report also argues that if councils were given greater powers to take action on empty properties, 8,688 could be brought back into use at just 10% of the cost of new-build housing.
Social housing waiting lists in district council areas have climbed to 303,000 households. Meanwhile, just over 9,800 new social homes were completed in 2023-24 – down from an average of 126,000 a year in the decades after World War Two.
For more on the topic of housing, check out The Temporary Accommodation Crisis: A call for urgent solutions.
