A regional mayor is urging the government to allow more flexibility in housing spending in a bid to tackle the area’s ongoing homelessness crisis.
West Midlands mayor Richard Parker – elected in May last year – has written to deputy prime minister Angela Rayner to secure greater flexibility in how his housing budget is spent.
Mr Parker told delegates at the UKREiiF investment and real estate conference that “great strides” had been taken in his first year of office – but with increased flexibility, even more could be achieved.
He said: “We’ve used some combined authority funds to decontaminate a development site which will deliver 300 social housing units. That’s why I want to work with partners and that’s the difference we’re making and how we’ll continue to improve people’s lives until all the families are out of temporary accommodation.
“I’ve written to the deputy prime minister asking for some more flexibility in the use of the housing funds I’ve got so I can use them more effectively to deliver more projects like that.
“Everything for me is about delivery. I want to work with housing associations which have got current development projects and in essence what we’ll be doing is giving them additional resources so the homes they’re building can be converted to social housing
“If we can do that then we can deliver thousands of homes in a quick timescale over the next 18 to 24 months and take many thousands of children out of poverty.
“I’m extremely pleased with the progress, but there’s lots more to do.”
He said the scale of the homelessness crisis was clear to him during his campaign to be elected as mayor in 2024 and there were currently around 6,500 families and almost 14,000 children living temporary accommodation.
“I made a pledge that I wanted all those families into social housing as fast as possible. I’ve held steadfast to that commitment, as I wanted to make a difference to, and change the lives of, those people.
He added: “That issue was re-enforced to me when one day I went to visit a school in inner city Birmingham. Two children and their mother were evicted from their house overnight by a rogue landlord and if the teachers hadn’t put some money in the kitty so they could stay in a hotel then they would have been living on the streets. That sadly happens to families across the region every day.
“We started to look at using our housing funds differently. My predecessor delivered 47 units of social housing in eight years whereas we’ve made a commitment to 500 in 12 months.
“That’s about focus, it’s about working in partnership with housing associations, and it’s thinking differently about how we use housing funds.”
Tim Johnson, chief executive of the City of Wolverhampton Council added: “There’s no doubt that we operate in an incredibly ambitious region with fantastic opportunities to build homes which are affordable to families.
“We’ve listened to feedback and it’s quite clear that some previous ways of working are quite simply not fit for purpose. We need to consider how we can use public resources more effectively because every local authority is different so we can’t have a one size fits all approach.
“We must unlock the housing market and do it in way to reflect the mayor’s and the local authorities’ ambitions.”