Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention. I will come on to talk about those sites in my constituency that have planning permission but currently are not funded to build the social homes that could be on those sites. I think that is an important part of how we solve these challenges.

The Conservatives’ interventions to reduce social housing rents have also been disastrous for the ability of our councils to fund the maintenance of social housing and to fund new social homes. Southwark council calculated that Conservative-imposed rent cuts and freezes will cost the council’s housing revenue account £1 billion over 30 years. What is a very small saving for tenants has had a really big impact on the ability of councils to keep up with the maintenance needs of their social housing stock.

The Conservatives were happy to cut our councils’ budgets to the core and did not worry about the erosion of services that inevitably followed. Reform imagined that our councils were full of waste and profligacy, only to find that they are lean organisations that have constantly innovated in the face of austerity but that, over time, have become stretched, sometimes to breaking point.

A budget settlement based on a definition of deprivation that did not include housing costs, as was originally proposed, would have had absolutely dire consequences for inner-London councils. The reality is this: if rent eats up so much of someone’s income every month that they cannot afford the bare essentials, or if the only property they can afford to rent is so bad that it causes them and their family to become ill, then they are deprived and they face exactly the same consequences of that deprivation as anyone else anywhere in the country who simply does not have enough money to get by.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

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[Helen Hayes]

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank my hon. Friend, my constituency neighbour, for making such an impassioned and powerful speech. I declare an interest in that my constituency also covers both Lambeth and Southwark. She is talking about housing costs, which we know are so expensive in London. We have seen housing costs rise over 15 years, pushing more people into homelessness and temporary accommodation. Does she agree that the Government should look at the subsidy paid for temporary accommodation, which has been frozen since 2011? In real terms, rents have continued to go up in our constituencies.

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The maths on temporary accommodation costs simply does not add up at the moment. I have more to say on that a bit later in my speech.