Guest Blogger: Xander Stephenson

Housing minister John Healey has today announced that councils are to be given more flexibility to manage their waiting lists so that the diverse different needs of specific local areas can be taken into account when housing is allocated; an example being South Derbyshire who are examining how they can use their local lettings policies to create more mixed communities.

Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity, released figures earlier this week showing that as many as 82 local authorities would take between 10-33 years to clear their waiting lists. This suggest that if you were nearing the end of the waiting list under the previous mechanism, the new more flexible approach may push you further down the list. Caroline Davey, Shelter’s deputy director suggests that this lack of affordable housing is simply because not enough homes are being built to meet the growing demand.

When Gordon Brown became prime minister he pledged to make housing, especially affordable housing, one of his main priorities. However, local authority housing waiting lists increased to 1.77 million, up 100,000 by January this year and with the Local Government Association warning that that figure could top 5 million by 2010 and the Fabians warning of "social concentration camps".

Affordable housing has increased under Gordon Brown’s premiership with the number of ‘Social Rent’ houses being newly built increasing from 21,500 in 2006-2007 to 25,390 in 2007-2008 however; this is still a far cry from the 40,000 or so houses which were being built every year between 1992 and 1997 when Labour came to power.

Clearly decentralised decision making on housing allocation is a good thing, in terms of achieveing results appropriate for a local area, so long as it is not simply central government distancing itself from the problem of proving afforable housing. New affordable housing needs to be encouraged whether directly by the government or by the government creating incentives for the private sector to increase provision - that said, there are over a million homes in England lying empty with absentee landlords.