As Shelter’s petition to get the law changed on overcrowding comes to a close, the Government has issued the following statement in response:
This Government is committed to tackling overcrowding. An important part of this is to build more affordable homes sooner and make sure more of these are family-sized. That’s exactly why we’ve made housing a key priority, backed by an extra £1.5bn investment over the two years, and why we’re making sure that by 2010/11 a third of new affordable homes will have three or more bedrooms.
Prior to making any change to the statutory standards we want to ensure that we have the right processes in place to support overcrowded households. We are currently funding, through a £15m programme, 54 ‘pathfinder’ areas to develop their own strategies and practical solutions to reduce overcrowding
Through this programme we are also building our evidence base which will help to establish the full cost, impact and timing of undertaking a phased and manageable move to a new statutory standard.
Local authorities can develop their own definition of overcrowding to determine which households have ‘reasonable preference’ for social housing, and use definitions that are much more generous than the statutory standard.
The right long-term solution to overcrowding must be to increase supply of new houses: we have increased our investment in affordable housing over this year and next to deliver 112,000 new homes and we’ve launched the largest council house building programme in two decades.
Filed under: UK housing, housing, overcrowded, overcrowding, Overcrowding Act, shelter, UK housing
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