MJ Regeneration: The council homes push needs solid foundations

In his first set-piece speech as Prime Minister, Andy Burnham pledged to ‘oversee the biggest council house-building programme since the postwar period' – with no indication as to how to deliver this, of course.My not-very-educated guess is that the esteemed readers of The MJ are too battle weary even to engage. Alongside the exhausting struggle just to keep afloat, members and officers are subject to the renewed relentless push for devolution – and mayors – against a backdrop of chaotic local government reorganisation and all the other Burnham ‘stuff'.Ricocheting around like a beleaguered steel ball in a pinball machine, council leaders face increasingly impossible demands. We are all so distracted. In the meantime, the day job is not going away. Big promises to fix adult social care and end rough sleeping sound very good but thus far there's nothing to take any pressure off local authority obligations right now.I am an ardent advocate of the wholesale resurrection of council housing – and I used to work for a Conservative Cabinet minister. I have long since come to the conclusion that the last time we didn't have a crisis was in the late 1970s when the state directly intervened to provide homes.Back in the 70s, local authorities were geared up with huge teams; long gone are the days of the borough engineer, the borough surveyor and the borough architect. Post austerity and all else, we no longer have the skills, let alone the capacity, to take on this task.Many (not all) local authorities have assets, but more important is their formal powers. And councils also enjoy invaluable convening powers: the ability to establish creative partnerships to meet social policy objectives. But council leaders are going to need serious support to deliver.That's not to say that it shouldn't be done. Just to say we're going to have to find a new model for delivery, one that pushes as much as possible onto the private sector.A specific programme could be forged which empowers local authorities, and other public sector landowners, to develop land in partnership with established BTR developers for social rental homes; this programme to be funded through a designated recyclable fund administered by Homes England and termed Public Build to Rent (PBTR) – or perhaps even 'Modern Council Housing'.Only a fraction of the public sector property estate (estimated to be worth some £450bn) would be appropriate to be put forward for housing development. Nevertheless, a good starting point for any PBTR approach would be to build homes on publicly owned land to demonstrate the model – although, of course, the programme need not be restricted only to publicly owned land.The central suggestion is that local authorities should acquire (or use existing) land that is suitable for housing, within the provision of their Local Plan (even if it is still only emerging), give it planning consent for housing and then commission the delivery of new social rental homes. Once built and occupied, these PBTR homes would be sold to institutional investors.Local authorities have a wide range of levers to deploy, notably planning and Compulsory Purchase Order powers, and the ability to borrow money at preferential rates through the Public Sector Works Loan mechanisms. Even against the backdrop of a push for devolution to the mayoral/combined authorities it is still the local authorities that hold these powers, so delivery would start with them.Having said that, the huge potential for aggregating the powers to deliver homes held by constituent local authorities in a combined authority to achieve investible scale has already been indicated by tentative steps in both the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the West Midlands Combined Authority.Many (not all) local authorities have assets, but more important is their formal powers. And councils also enjoy invaluable convening powers: the ability to establish creative partnerships to meet social policy objectives. But council leaders are going to need serious support to deliver.Mr Burnham is going to have to put in significant measures to decisively help and empower. It's going to need solid work: policy frameworks, expert guidance, fiscal incentives, and that's just for starters. It is far from a walk in the park.Jackie Sadek is co-author, with Peter Bill, of Broken Homes. Britain's Housing Crisis: Faults, Factoids and Fixes

Title

HOUSING

MJ Regeneration: The council homes push needs solid foundations

By Jackie Sadek | 21 September 2026

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