01 March 2002
Housing minister Sally Keeble said councils must widen access to housing beyond the traditional focus on social housing for rent, because public subsidy alone would not solve the problem.
Schemes where local authorities reduce the sale price of land to the private sector in return for ensuring more affordable housing on any development was one way ahead, said Keeble.
An alternative is to get developers and registered social landlords to provide accommodation at below the market rents.
'We have got to think far more imaginatively than we've done in the past and we've got to look to the longer term,' Keeble told a Key Worker conference organised by the Guardian on February 27. She, however, seemed to rule out councils building new houses themselves.
One 'imaginative' suggestion from one conference delegate was for local authorities to begin offering mortgages to key workers.
But Dr Peter Williams, deputy director general of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, said this would only work if councils could offer schemes not put up by the private sector.
The conference earlier heard from Neale Coleman, a senior policy adviser to the London mayor, who said 10,000 new homes could be built in the capital each year if councils insisted on 50% social housing from developers.
PFmar2002
