Areas with elected leaders would bypass HCA in major shake-up, which could extend to all councils
The Conservative party is working up plans to give the £3bn annual funding for social housing directly to councils and elected mayors if the party wins the forthcoming general election.
Tory shadow housing minister Grant Shapps said the party was planning a major shake-up of the way social housing was funded. He confirmed a Tory government would give funding in London to mayor Boris Johnson and repeat this for any other councils with directly elected mayors.
Senior Tory sources said ultimately the idea was for all social housing funding to be taken away from the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) and given directly to local authorities.
Shapps’ policy team has met with Sir Bob Kerslake, the HCA chief executive, to discuss the plans, and has set up a team to work out how they will be put into practice.
Shapps said: “We believe in local democracy and empowering people to grab hold of their futures. That’s why we think it’s important to scrap the red tape and get the money to where it’s needed.
“In London there is an elected mayor with a huge public mandate, so it is hard to see why the [London] HCA board needs to include the mayor and the chief executive of the HCA. By cutting out the bureaucracy, we will ensure more of the money gets to where it is most needed.”
The move will be a big shift in social housing in the capital, with London already receiving the biggest share of social housing grant – £4bn in the past three years. In addition, the Tories have said they will introduce 12 new city mayors early on in a new parliament, so the move could quickly affect more areas.
It will mean that, rather than co-operating with one unelected quango, housebuilders and housing associations wanting to receive grants will have to deal with local authorities in different areas, which may have different criteria and requirements.
Social housing grant represents half the HCA’s £16bn three-year budget. Shapps has previously hit out at inefficiency in the HCA and hinted that the Tories would curtail it, but has so far not published detailed plans.
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