Source · Select Committees · Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee
Recommendation 17
17
Deferred
Consider extending Awaab's Law to temporary accommodation and require rights information for residents.
Recommendation
The Group should consider how Awaab’s Law will be extended to temporary accommodation. The strategy on ending homelessness must clearly outline how all accommodation providers will be expected to fulfil this new requirement. Once Awaab’s Law is in force in temporary accommodation, the Government must require local authorities to provide homeless residents with information about their rights and the complaints process. (Recommendation, Paragraph 73) 47
Government Response Summary
The government did not address the recommendation concerning the extension of Awaab's Law to temporary accommodation, nor did it commit to outlining this in the homelessness strategy or requiring local authorities to provide information on tenant rights. Instead, it focused on its commitment to increasing social and affordable housebuilding through various funding programmes and development policies.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
55. The government has not set an affordable housing target to date, but we are committed to delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation. 56. The long-term housing strategy will be published later this year and will include the actions that we will take to reach this vision, building on announcements we have already made, and provide long-term certainty. 57. When this Government took office, the 2021–26 Affordable Homes Programme had committed nearly its entire budget. Since then, we have announced £800 million in additional programme funding to deliver up to 7,800 new social and affordable homes. We have been pleased to see strong take up for this funding from councils and housing associations, and we know that this funding is now close to being fully committed. 58. On 25 March we further injected £2 billion from 2026/27, to build up to 18,000 new homes by the end of this Parliament. This funding is a downpayment on future long-term investment to enable new schemes to get going – and will act as a bridge to a new programme. 59. We will announce additional funding for next year (2026/27) and beyond at the Spending Review later this year. This new investment will deliver a mix of homes for sub-market rent and homeownership, with a particular focus on delivering homes for Social Rent. 60. In addition, the provision of affordable homes will be supported by our ‘Golden Rules’ for Green Belt development. Prior to development plan policies for affordable housing being updated in accordance with the revised National Planning Policy Framework, the affordable housing contribution required to satisfy the ‘Golden Rules’ is 15 percentage points above the highest existing affordable housing requirement that would otherwise apply to the development, subject to a cap of 50%. We estimate that under this model, the median Green Belt local planning authority affordable housing requirement will be 50%. 15