Council co-signs joint open letter to Angela Rayner MP on social housing

A joint letter from the largest council landlords in England has been submitted to government calling for urgent action on social housing.

On Wednesday (10^th July), Sheffield City Council joined the 20 largest local authority landlords in jointly publishing an interim report. Led by Southwark Council, it called for the government to ‘save council homes’ as they discuss the increasing threat to the future of our country’s council housing.

The interim report set out how we all believe this can be achieved. The full report is due to be released later this year.

This same group of 20 of England’s largest council landlords are partnering with the National Housing Federation, the Chartered Institute for Housing, the Association of Retained Council Housing (ARCH) and the National Federation of Almos (NFA) in today’s joint open letter.

It is signed by Leader of Sheffield City Council, Cllr Tom Hunt, and addressed to Angela Rayner MP, the new Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. The letter calls for urgent government action to restore the confidence and capacity of the social housing sector and asks for an urgent roundtable meeting with her.

As a Council, we appreciate this will be no easy task. Nationally, there is higher demand on social housing than ever before. This creates significant logistical and financial challenges as we seek to both maintain and increase social housing. But we believe that by working alongside these other local authorities, lobbying for support from Government and sharing best practices these pressures can be eased.

Since March this year (2024), Sheffield City Council has been working alongside these partner local authority landlords to develop recommendations that can ‘secure the future of England’s council housing’.

By joining with our fellow social housing landlords, we hope this work can be enhanced by highlighting to government the urgent need for widespread upgrades and improvement in council houses nationwide.

Cllr Tom Hunt, Leader of Sheffield City Council, said: “Council housing has a vital role to play in helping to solve the wider housing crisis in the United Kingdom.

“Sheffield City Council is working hard to provide more social housing and improve our existing homes. We look forward to working with government to ensure council housing has a strong future so that more people have a safe, secure, and affordable home.

“Our aim, as always, remains to provide more choice of good quality and affordable homes for residents. This also helps create local jobs and training opportunities as part of the Council’s procurement arrangements.”

Cllr Douglas Johnson, Chair of Sheffield City Council’s Housing Committee, said: “Sheffield stands with our fellow local authority landlords because we want to get social housing to the top of the agenda in parliament. We recognise the challenges facing a new government and believe the council housing we collectively provide can offer so many benefits to wider society.

“We are proud to be a part of this group of social landlords that own and manage our council housing. It is a fundamental public service we provide and we want to see better investment in housing to enable us to maintain homes to the highest standards that our thousands of tenants deserve.”

For more information on the interim report, head to the Southwark Council website.

To read the letter in full, again head to the Southwark Council site.