Decision Details

Motion F

 Proposer: Cllr Warnes:-

Motion that:-

This Council calls upon the Government to significantly enhance the ability of Councils such as Colchester to build more new council homes.

It’s 100 years since the passing of the Addison Act which gave Councils significant new duties and funding to build their own housing.  Colchester has, as have many other places in the UK, a housing crisis.  We have many residents either facing or experiencing homelessness within our borough, yet we also have a chronic shortage of council housing. 

This Council is committed to building new council housing, but we face continuing restraints on our ability to deliver at scale and need Government to make council house building more viable.  

We therefore call upon the borough’s MP’s Bernard Jenkin, Priti Patel and Will Quince to find new inspiration through the laudable aims of Christopher Addison that inspired council house building throughout the country and lobby the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Her Majesty’s Treasury to:

• end restrictions on the use of the Right to Buy receipts so all the money we raise from council house sales could go back into building replacement homes

• provide clarity over long-term social rent levels so we can continue to prudently borrow in order to deliver at scale a new generation of council housing for working families and those households in greatest need within our borough.

As the motion relates to an executive function it will stand referred direct to Cabinet, unless Council Procedure Rule 11(2) is suspended.