By Cllr Danny Adilypour, Lambeth Council’s Deputy Leader and Cabinet member for Housing, Investment and New Homes
Despite the limits placed on our powers and cuts to our funding in recent years, providing good-quality, affordable social housing for our residents remains one of the most important things we do as local councils. Helping to put a roof over the heads of people in real and urgent housing need was, in fact, one of the main reasons why I became a councillor in the first place.
But, in recent years, amid pressures including the austerity imposed on local government, post-Brexit impacts on the labour and construction markets, and the cost of living and housing crises pushing more people into homelessness, the demand for our services has risen to unprecedented levels.
In the past week alone, almost 160 homeless households have come to us for help in finding emergency housing. They have joined the 4,600 Lambeth families already living in temporary accommodation – and these numbers are continuing to grow rapidly.
It is clear that we have a social housing crisis in Lambeth, and across the country, as a result of the national failure to fund, invest or prioritise the maintenance and building of social housing.
The situation has only become worse over the past two years, as the cost of living crisis left more and more people struggling to make ends meet.
We have worked hard to build the first new council homes in a generation in recent years, with hundreds of homes built for local families to rent from us. But the fact is that there still aren’t enough genuinely affordable homes in Lambeth for those who need them – and more than 40,000 households are currently on our waiting list for social housing.
At the same time, the cost of housing people in temporary accommodation has continued to increase: in some cases the average cost of a nightly paid placement has doubled in price in the past 12 months.
This means that, this year alone, we’ll be spending an additional £28m on temporary accommodation, when our financial resources have already been stretched by years of deep cuts to local government finances.
Without any additional funding to meet this huge increase in costs, it is inevitable that we need to take tough decisions to make savings across the whole council to ensure our continued financial stability.
I am hopeful that the election of a new government means we will start to see the reversal of some of the poor decisions made to the detriment of local government over recent years.
There have already been positive announcements that show the new government is ready and willing to accelerate the building of the new homes that Lambeth, London and the country as a whole desperately need.
We now also need to see urgent action to address the growing and linked financial and housing pressures on local councils.
The housing benefit we can claim back on behalf of someone in temporary accommodation is still set at 2011 rent levels, which does not reflect the reality of these costs. If this was updated to reflect the true costs of accommodation today, our overspend would reduce by £20m instantly.
Until we see these sorts of sensible changes and a fresh approach to how local councils are funded and supported in meeting housing needs, we will have to continue making incredibly tough choices about all services.
This is the only way we will be able to keep supporting the most vulnerable people in our communities, by providing them with emergency housing when they need it. And we will continue to take the difficult decisions that are needed to ensure we are able to do this.
