Council Housing

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on securing this important debate.

In Poole, we have one of the widest gaps between average wages and private rents in the country, and we suffer from a distinct lack of truly affordable housing for local people, with house prices that are 16% higher than the national figure sitting alongside rents far higher than rents in other parts of the south-west. In 2024-25, my local council built just 89 affordable homes, out of a total of 988 new properties. What we do have is a proliferation of luxury seafront apartments that local people cannot afford. It is no wonder that housing is the biggest issue raised by my constituents. Just 1% of properties in Poole are affordable to rent at the local rate of housing benefit. The freeze on local housing allowance is making rents unaffordable; it needs to be uprated urgently. Also, we need a system of rent controls, as a step towards easing the housing crisis while the building gets started .

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is giving an impassioned speech about Poole that is really resonating with me as the MP for Chichester, because I see in my constituency large-scale developments delivering four and five-bedroom luxury houses that are not affordable for most people. Does he agree that middle-income earners are particularly affected? A lot of our frontline service workers cannot afford private rents, but earn too much to be eligible for social housing. That is why we need to see a number of social homes across the whole country that the Government will deliver, so that developers cannot renege on their commitments to deliver the homes that we are asking for.

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

Yes. Obviously, there is an issue about viability and the way developers use that to renege on their earlier commitments to local authorities. There is also the key point that if we want the public sector and public services of the future, the workers who provide those services need to be able to afford to live in the area, so it is a circular argument that we need to keep making with the Government.

Building a new generation of council houses is essential to ending the housing crisis. The £39 billion social and affordable homes programme is welcome, but does not go far enough. The Government need to be more creative when it comes to longer term financing of the sector. Currently, £88 billion-worth of UK pension funds is invested in fossil fuel companies. What better use of that money could there be than redirecting it into council housing?

Let us be more ambitious in our growth agenda. Let us see a council house building programme as a key part of that ambition. Let us remove the historical debt from councils’ housing revenue accounts, which other Members have mentioned. Let us unlock low-cost financing for council house building, enable councils to buy land at the right price to build social rent homes, and bring empty properties back to life. Let us give future generations the hope that was there after 1945, with a real housing revolution that offers everyone a place they can call home.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

Thank you, Sir Jeremy. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) not only on securing the debate but on the powerful and thoughtful way in which he commenced it, as usual. I also congratulate the other 15 hon. Members who contributed. I cannot disagree with any of the points made powerfully by them, and I hope that the Minister is listening.

I declare an interest as a member of the Cornwall Rural Housing Association and as a past chief executive, now volunteer board member, of the Cornwall Community Land Trust, which is a registered provider of affordable homes across Cornwall and on the Isles of Scilly. I noticed that we were not only debating the issue of council housing but straying into questions about the integrity of the planning and development system. That system is of course critical to delivering the big house building programme that the Government have promised. It is clear that in many parts of the country house building, particularly of social and affordable homes, has stalled.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

An issue we have seen in my constituency is developers citing viability assessments to try to renege on the commitments that they originally outlined to deliver social and affordable homes. They would rather pay something called a commuted sum—in effect a fine—that does not actually help to deliver social homes at scale. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister should look at the way the commuted sum is assessed so that we do not lose the opportunity for social homes to be delivered?