Member

There is a widespread belief that affordable and social housing are the same thing—I hear it even in speeches and read it in articles. In reality, affordable is a vague term without a clear definition. The Minister will say that we have official definitions, and of course they come from the National Planning Policy Framework. In the NPPF, affordable rent can be set at up to 80% of local market rates. In high-pressure areas, 80% of local market rent is still completely out of reach for many ordinary working families; it is affordable in name only. Interestingly, when this tenure was introduced by the then Minister, Grant Shapps, he called it “intermediate rent”, less confusingly. Social housing is entirely different, because it is pegged to local wages and national formulas. There are arguments about how effective that is, but at least it is an attempt to tie it in some way to affordability and not the volatile private property market. It remains the only housing truly accessible to low-income households.