Sheffield call for action to tackle city housing crisis

The motion was brought to a meeting of Sheffield City Council yesterday (July 17) by Sheffield Community Group members Couns Dianne Hurst and Garry Weatherall. There was no debate on the motion or the amendments from three other parties owing to time constraints but all were voted on.

The motion and all the amendments were approved.

The motion said that between April 2014 and April 2023, the number of Sheffield City Council-owned and managed homes declined from 41,059 to 38,470.

In the financial year 2023-24 there were 843 households in the city facing homelessness who the council had a duty to help, and 765 Sheffield households in temporary accommodation as of June 20 this year.

The motion stated: “At the same time, applicants are advised to seek private rental homes, incurring higher costs which are unaffordable for many; the average private rent was £850 per month last December, compared to an average social rent of £358 for the last financial year.”

Targets

It pointed out that a report presented to the February full council meeting showed that the city has a shortage of 902 homes and anticipates a further loss of stock each year. The motion added there are no clear targets for building, investment or acquisition during 2024-25 and councillors were told that, in the absence of a 10-year housing strategy, a partnership approach would be required.

The motion said it “believes that this commitment is not sufficiently clear, demonstrates a lack of ambition and, put simply, lets the people of Sheffield down”.

The Community Group called for the council housing policy committee to “consider using the full range of tools available to borrow monies to increase housing stock” and urged the council to restrict the right for tenants to buy their council homes.

The group called for improvements on reviewing and managing empty homes, bringing unlet properties back into use as soon as possible and promoting a system of pre-allocation of properties that are about to become vacant.

They also called for the housing policy committee to consider investing in retrofitting homes on the basis of ‘worst first’ and to consider building new homes for rent at social rent levels, “enabling the regeneration of whole communities as a result”.

Retrofitting means adding new features to older buildings, usually to make them more energy efficient and cheaper to heat and run, which in turn helps to tackle the climate crisis.

Labour’s amendment added that public consultation is underway on a new 10-year housing strategy “to enable all of our communities to have access to the right homes and neighbourhoods to meet their needs”. This will cover social housing, privately owned and privately rented housing.

Commitment

It noted that Sheffield is experiencing high demand for housing and pointed to the council’s commitment to build and acquire an extra 1,012 council homes within five years, making sites available for housing associations and work to develop three new city centre neighbourhoods.

Labour welcomed “the aims of the newly-elected government to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable house-building in a generation”. It also hailed the government’s stated commitment to building new social rented homes and to better protect existing stock by reviewing right-to-buy discounts and increasing protections on newly-built social housing.

The LibDems pointed out that a recent report by the regulator of social housing “shows the city council has failed to meet their new consumer standards and “does not have an accurate record of the condition of tenants’homes”.

The amendment won the deletion of the paragraph in the original motion referring to borrowing money to increase housing stock.

It resolved to ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government – Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner – to implement a 10-year housing emergency upgrade programme with free insulation for those on low incomes.

Backlog

The LibDem amendment called for the council to urgently address 10,000 outstanding home repairs. It said there must be “clear and transparent targets to reduce the backlog of repairs, making better use of the 31% increase in budget in the last two years” and allowing tenants to directly employ an approved contractor where repairs have not been carried out in appropriate time.

The Green Party amendment noted that the New Economic Foundation has reported that private landlords are set to receive £70 billion in subsidy through housing benefit in five years from 2021-26.

The amendment noted that the council is one of the 20 largest local authority landlords in England which signed the recent Securing the Future of CouncilHousing report, with 23 recommendations for urgent solutions to solvethe crisis in council housing.

It said the proposals put forward to the government in that report include:

• A fair and sustainable model for Housing Revenue Account funding;
• Ending the right to buy for new council house-building;
• An immediate cash injection of £644 million;
• A new, long-term Green and Decent Homes programme to bring all council housing up to the new standard of safety, decency and energy efficiency by 2030;
• Funding to complete stalled council house-building schemes, “such as the Gleadless Valley masterplan regeneration”.

The amendment said it “believes that government should support all these solutions not only because they are what our tenants and residents need and deserve, but also because they support the economy, improve well-being and reduce the demand on other public services”.