Michael Gove is The United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. This is a new role for Mr. Gove as well as for the UK Parliament: he is the first Secretary for Levelling Up in UK history.
Although Levelling Up is new, the government isn’t shy about putting resources in that direction: transport connections, new facilities, pubs and restaurants are all eligible.
Unlike Levelling Up, Housing is a “regular” in government mandates. With the significance of housing during the pandemic, it would be reasonable to expect that housing would also be in line for government resources. One might expect to see more funding going to social rent housing1, with so many people at risk for eviction and so many people experiencing homelessness. But, as a recent report from Shelter England lays out, funding for social rent housing is a trickle compared with Levelling Up2.
The idea behind Levelling Up is that some communities have been “left behind.” Shelter England picks three of those “left behind,” Plymouth, Burnley and Sheffield, and describes the housing needs in those communities. In each one, thousands of people are eligible for social housing, and hundreds of families with children are living in temporary accommodation, having become homeless. The local councils want to add more social housing stock but the rules that govern how the funding gets distributed makes it virtually impossible to add the deeply affordable housing stock that is so desperately needed. Nor is the total amount set aside for housing nearly enough to meet the existing need.
Shelter England concludes its report with recommendations to increase the amount of funding for social rent housing as well as to make changes to funding programs that will make it easier to plan and add more units. Read the full report here: Levelling up with social housing
In Plymouth, Shelter England’s report has already drawn the attention of the local media. Read this story in Pirate FM: ‘Levelling Up’ without social housing could escalate Plymouth’s housing emergency
The Lancashire Telegraph has picked up the story about Burnley, the second of the three communities: Burnley: Lack of affordable housing will ‘ultimately lead to homelessness’
The Star follows suit for Sheffield: Shelter demands action from Government over Sheffield ‘housing emergency’
Footnotes
- Here we mean housing where rents are determined by income, rather than the housing market or council budget shortfalls.
- For more on the trickle, read about the latest official stats on the number of new social homes built in England in the Big Issue: ‘It’s beyond belief’: Only one social home built for every 195 households on waiting lists and in Glouscestershire Live: One in six new ‘affordable’ homes in Gloucestershire was for cheapest type of housing
