Chancellor Gordon Brown has announced that public subsidy for housing will rise by over £1bn a year to £5.9bn a year by 2005-06.
Presenting the comprehensive spending review – the government’s spending for the next three years – to the House of Commons this afternoon, Brown said: “We are doubling the housing budget, having already doubled it.”
The chancellor added: “As the demand for new and better housing grows in a growing economy, it is time for a further step change with the most sustained rise in housing investment for 25 years.
He said: “On Thursday the deputy prime minister will make a statement to the House on his reforms: new homes for social tenants and key workers – including low-cost home ownership in London and the South East – and plans to tackle homelessness and upgrade old properties in all regions where housing need exists.
“And to pay for this we will, by 2005-06, invest £5.9bn a year – since 1997, a 105% real-terms rise in housing budgets.”
Brown was adamant that “for more given in resources, more is required in results”.
He continued: “For this government, reform and resources go together. To demand reform when you would deny resources is a betrayal.”
He said: “Poor performing social services and housing departments would have new directors and senior managers.”
To ensure that the housing budget is spent correctly the government has proposed a new “single housing inspectorate.”
But shadow chancellor Michael Howard said that the inspectorate would merely tie up local authorities in more central government red-tape, while the money would do nothing to combat the low rate of new housing being built, which is at its lowest level since 1924.
Neil Sinden, the Council for the Protection of Rural England’s (CPRE) assistant director, welcomed the review: “A boost to social housing offers the potential to increase investment in deprived urban areas, make better use of previously used land and buildings, and deliver high-quality, higher density housing which better meets the nations housing needs.”
EGi News 15/07/02
