The Liberal Democrat conference vowed to greatly reduce waiting lists for social housing by backing plans to build 1.3m new social homes over the next 10 years. Conference also called for local authorities to be enabled to increase their stock of social and private housing in a number of ways. These included allowing them to reinvest all the proceeds from right-to-buy sales into new social housing; ring-fencing housing revenue account capital receipts and rental income for local investment; and, introduction of the ‘fourth option' for the management of social housing, putting councils on a level playing field with social landlords when refurbishing housing stock. The number of families on social housing waiting lists has risen from 1m 10 years ago to 1.63m and 93,980 families are registered as homeless by councils. ‘We must build faster and better, with at least one million new affordable homes in the next 10 years to solve Britain's housing crisis,' said Liberal Democrat shadow housing minister, Lembit Opik. ‘The Liberal Democrats will help families into homes they can afford in communities that are sustainable.'
