The Co-operative Party has published a report, Yes In Our Backyard, urging the government to expand community-led housing as a solution to the UK’s housing crisis.
The fifth in the Party’s Community Britain series, the report highlights projects such as Edinburgh Student Housing Co-operative.
“By prioritising community ownership,” it says, “we can move towards ending the profit-driven precarity of the status quo and getting back to the core function of housing, which should always be to provide secure, affordable and comfortable homes for people.”
The report calls for new legislation to support alternative housing models, including the introduction of a Co-operative Housing Tenure to formally recognise the model in law. It also urges regulators to provide targeted support for community housing and address barriers to finance, alongside a dedicated programme within the government’s Co-operative Development Unit.
In her foreword to the report, Rayner backs the introduction of a new Co-operative Housing Tenure and calls for greater development support for community housing projects. She also pointed to her time as housing secretary, citing £20m in funding allocated to community-led housing.
Rayner told the Mirror: “As with so many of the challenges our country faces, communities already have so many of the answers. Rather than holding them back and frustrating them, the system should be on their side and putting power in their hands.
“As housing secretary I was proud to back new social and council housing, and to support community-led housing with funding and through the national planning rules, but the truth is that community solutions still face too many barriers to getting off the ground.”
Co-operative Party general secretary Joe Fortune added that communities are “bearing the brunt of a housing crisis dominated by private interests”, arguing that rising rents and declining social housing are “failing far too many people”.
