Under new Conservative proposals, tenants in social housing across Worcestershire are to be offered the chance of genuine social mobility and equality of opportunity. Pride will be restored to local neighbourhoods, helping address anti-social behaviour and encourage social responsibility. Local homes will be built for local people, with the community - not bureaucrats in Whitehall - having the final say on the homes they want.
This comes as the latest analysis shows as the average house in Malvern Hills costs £255,274 , compared to average earnings of £34,491 This means that the average house is 7.4 times average earnings. In Wychavon, the average home costs £268,850 compared to average earnings of £30,455, meaning a cost of times 8.8 earnings.
The detailed proposals include:
- Incentives not top-down targets: Scrapping regional planning, and enabling councils to revise their current local plans to protect Green Belt land and prevent the unwanted imposition of so-called eco-towns. Instead, councils will keep more of the proceeds of new house building from council tax receipts, giving incentives to support new sustainable development.
- Local Housing Trusts: Allowing villages and towns to create entirely new community-led bodies with planning powers to develop local homes for local people, provided there is strong community backing. Affordable homes built by Local Housing Trusts will remain in local ownership in perpetuity, ensuring that future generations can benefit.
- More family homes and stopping garden grabbing: Reversing the classification of gardens as brownfield land, and allowing councils to prevent over-development of neighbourhoods and stop 'garden grabbing', which has resulted in a glut of flats, the demolition of suburban family homes and concreting over of their gardens.
- Rewards for good behaviour: Offering tenants with a record of five years' good tenant behaviour a 10% equity share in their social rented property, which can be cashed in when they want to move up the housing ladder. This will give tenants a direct financial stake in the state of their neighbourhood, and reward law-abiding citizens who pay their rent on time, keep their garden tidy, and ensure their children stay out of trouble. By contrast, Labour policies reinforce and reward welfare dependency.
- A 'Right to Move': Introducing a comprehensive national mobility scheme for good tenants who wish to move to other social sector properties, and piloting a scheme which allows good social tenants to demand that their social landlord sell their current property and use the proceeds, minus transaction costs, to buy (and thereby bring into the social rented sector) another property of their choice - anywhere in England.
- Cutting waiting lists: Relaxing the rules that prevent thousands of habitable empty properties being used to house those on local authority waiting lists. 5,653 people are currently on the waiting lists in Wychavon, an increase of 138% since 1997, while 971 are on the local authority waiting list in Malvern Hills, an increase of 72%.
Harriett Baldwin said:
"Given the average house in West Worcestershire costs about 8 times average earnings, I have always agreed that we need to do more to help people get on and move up the housing ladder. We do need to build social housing which promotes opportunity and social mobility, rather than reinforcing welfare dependency. The Rural Exception sites in our villages have produced some good developments.
"However, these plans ought to be developed locally, involving the parishes and looking at local housing need, rather than by the unelected Regional Assembly through its Regional Spatial Strategy. This Stalinist approach has failed and needs to be scrapped immediately."