Houdini Housing

Across England, a quiet injustice is taking place that more Liberal Democrats should be talking about. A growing number of Labour-controlled councils are choosing to remove thousands of people from social housing waiting lists by scrapping the lowest-priority bands.

In Bristol, Ealing, Brent, Lambeth, and most recently in my own borough of Trafford, councils have moved to eliminate the lowest bands from their housing registers—typically the lowest two bands, which represent people in less urgent housing need. This process affects tens of thousands of applicants, the majority of whom are often overcrowded, living with family, or stuck in precarious or unaffordable rental arrangements.

From council to council, the explanation goes that these applicants have no realistic chance of being housed. Removing them from the register is about "managing expectations." But let's be honest about what this really is: a statistical sleight of hand. Instead of tackling the root causes of housing need or setting ambitious targets to expand local social housing stock, councils are simply deleting the problem.

These councils are - for the most part - Labour controlled (though in Bristol the Green Party are the largest party with no overall control). These are local authorities that fly the flag for Labour’s national messaging on housing: build more, reform planning, challenge NIMBYism. And yet, when it comes to the crunch—when the hard decisions about who gets help and who doesn't are made—they are choosing to lower their aspirations on social housing rather than raise their supply.

There is an uncomfortable dissonance between what Labour say nationally and what they are doing locally. Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner talk frequently about the need to "build, build, build" to solve the housing crisis. But a cynic might observe that what Labour councils are actually doing is building anything but social housing—and quietly cutting the number of people who are officially counted as needing it. If the waiting list shrinks, the crisis must be getting better, right?

This is an injustice that the Liberal Democrats should challenge fiercely.

There is a principled liberal case to be made here: that our housing system should measure need accurately and strive to meet it honestly. Removing people from waiting lists because they’re unlikely to be housed is the bureaucratic equivalent of removing hospital patients from a queue because there aren’t enough doctors.

This isn’t a niche, technical issue—it’s a political question about the kind of society we want. Do we genuinely believe that everyone deserves the dignity of a secure, affordable home? Or are we content to let the aspirations of tens of thousands of people disappear from view, so that Labour ministers can claim to have halved waiting lists?

People already feel like the system is broken. If Labour get away with tricks like this, without a progressive challenge, we can be sure that it will push more people into the arms of Nigel Farage.

Many of the people in my community are giving up on the idea of a home to call their own. Too many of my residents have waited years on housing waiting lists. But the message of despondency and abandonment it will send to them, should the council cut them from the waiting list all together, is unthinkable to me as a liberal.

As Liberal Democrats, we know we have the housing policies, targets and local know-how to radically address the housing crisis. We must take the fight to Labour. Because in their urban heartlands up and down the country, it is their indifference to the poor quality and the scarcity of housing that is pushing people so rapidly into clutches of the populists.