Council housing is important, it’s in Crawley’s DNA. At a time that housing demand is higher than ever, the ability of councils to deliver the provision of decent and affordable accommodation for those of our existing residents who need it is as important as it ever has been.
But that also means the council has a duty to all of our existing tenants, something we take very seriously at Crawley Borough Council.
I very much welcome last week’s publication of the inspection report by the Regulator of Social Housing on how the council provides housing services for its tenants. This result means that while the Regulator is overall assured that Crawley Homes is meeting the required standard, although identifying some areas where further work is required. This is not an easy standard to meet, but we have done so.
We are deeply committed at Crawley Borough Council to delivering better outcomes for all of our tenants and I am really pleased that this has been recognised by the Regulator. We will use this constructive feedback to build an even stronger service for the future.
We’ve got big plans to ensure more tenants will benefit from council housing, with a programme of building over the coming years that we hope will see at least 500 council homes coming forward.
The challenges we face in the delivery of this remain similar. However, the Labour Government’s new policies are very helpful in this regard, beginning to unravel well over a decade and a half of Tory policies that had made it more difficult to retain our housing stock and undermined councils’ ability to build. Despite Crawley Borough Council having one of the best records in council housing of any local authority our size, over that period we still ended the Tories’ last period of Government with fewer council houses than we started with.
It won’t be fixed overnight, in truth it will take years to achieve in full because housebuilding is not a fast process.
That makes the Tories’ sustained failure to do virtually any of what was necessary on housing in the time they had even more damning, it has condemned far too many households to the uncertainty of temporary accommodation, for years longer than would have been necessary – and cost councils like ours millions in revenue to pay for it.
Cllr Michael Jones
Leader, Crawley Borough Council