Camerons plans to reform social housing.

[DJKillaQueen]

A tenner says the lotto winners will move...and if I lose...they'll pay :))

The reform of Housing Finaince is reform of the housing Revenue Subsidy System which is in fact a plan drawn up by the previous Labour government but which the Coalition have decided to implement. At present central government creams off a percentage of rental income collected by local authorities and then gives part of it back under the dubious title of 'subsidy'. In addition local authorities can borrow money for capaital programmes.

Under the new system, local authorities will get to keep most of the rental income they collect but will have the amount they can borrow capped by central government. That cap will be set according to what central government thinks the local authority should be collecting in rents irregardless of what it actually does collect or not. We are still waiting to see the first figures for the new system but estimates suggest that Southwark may be around ?9million worse off each year......whilst having had almost ?300million of current outstanding debt written off at the start of the new system (Southwarks current capital debts are at around ?700million).

The other reforms will still need to go through the parliamentary process and may or may not get through. My feelings are that the other reforms will have very little impact on the current shortage of available social housing or the lack of three and four bedroom homes. The fact is that in Southwark, existing housing stock just doesn't have the needed number of homes of that size. The average number of bids on a three or four bedroomed council homes is 300 each time one appears in the homsesearch magazine...and that is just from existing tenants needing bigger properties for their families. The bottom line is that we need to build more affordable housing and stop selling off the social housing we do still have. The coalition are doing nothing to tackle the over inflated housing market and it's consequences.

There are other issues too. The coalition have drastically cut the money for decent homes. It won't even pay for 20% of the outstanding work to be done. So any talk by the coalition of commitment to decent homes is bs I'm afraid.

By the way James, under the current laws, a succeded tenant can not be forced to move within six months of succession, or after a year from succession. It's absolutely fair and plenty of other local authorities use it..... The fact that Southwark chose not to make suceeded tenants downsize is unacceptable given how many families are crammed into one and two bedroomed flats whilst single suceeded tenants live in three and four bedroomed properties.

[James Barber]

Hi DJKillaQueen,

The advice from council officers that colleagues have been shown is that Southwark council housing might be ?1M worse of per year BUT it will have far less bureaucy to contend with. As the Housing Revenue Account is a huge account with hundreds of millions this should be perfectly manageable.

[DJKillaQueen]

I agree the new system will be an improvement and simpler to understand, without making much difference to tenants or the rents they pay. Everything will depend on the government getting their calculations right of course regarding the borrowing caps, but apart from that it should work for the better.