Andy Burnham

[Hurrydash]

He has a plan. So great to know.
Be even better to know what it is.
Is it cunning?
Does it involve turnips?
Will he present time team when Labour is annihilated in 2029?
Wow the suspense😀

Exactly that

Not following what you are saying. Please can you elaborate.

It’s clear enough.

The criteria for social housing are perfectly clear. What @RodneyKitten is saying is essentially the Reform/Restore position, meaning that foreign nationals shouldn't have any access to social housing.

I think that is fair enough especially if they have only just arrived in the UK

that is why the birth rate is falling and young people are struggling so much they are not being prioritised for social housing

Then the answer is more social housing. It couldn’t be simpler.

No. You tend to assume a lot.

What I’m saying is the people who used to have a big family and the respective housing have to be asked to downsize.

People who earn more should also be asked to leave.

People who have another property anywhere also should not be housed.

Common sense, really.

Audit the existing social housing and the occupancy first before building.

The huge building initiative makes the water crisis worse, leads to flooding and raises the air temperature.

It’s estimated there are 17 million houses in the UK which have at least one spare room. That’s enough to cater for the increase in UK population since WWII.

So, why don’t people use the rent a room scheme and earn an extra £7500 per year tax free?

Because they don’t want strangers in their house. Half of MN won’t even answer their front door or allow a tradesman to use their loo!

No, it isn't clear to me, which is why I asked if you could clarify. I'm not asking you to justify your point - I just want to understand what you mean. As you addressed the comment to me, it helps to understand what I'm responding to.

@blossomtoes

Because they don’t want strangers in their house.

Is that not nimbynism?

Half of MN won’t even answer their front door or allow a tradesman to use their loo!

Trades persons I have used recently have said their employers don’t allow them to use such facilities and they must use public facilities.

I tell them to go behind my outdoor cabin as it’s out of sight.

Absolutely and check on sub letting

i think we have a duty to preserve our green spaces and these building policies must conflict with environmental concerns, net zero and water shortages

I can try and paint a picture, but can’t find my crayons

Nimbyism! 😂

I could have made most of this post - I agree with almost every word.

Like you I’m also not happy about the use of distractions and artificial divisions. Manchester is not “the North”, its a wealthy city in the NW regarded as the midlands by my NE colleagues. It has benefitted from many of the Northern development programmes under both parties and Richard Lees made good use of that to develop Manchester and its economy - something I’d like to see Burnham credit more to Lees instead of presenting it as all his own achievements. Entire government departments have been moved to the regions for decades, complete with the jobs, under previous regional development initiatives. The Brussels style split will simply create Brussels style costs and bureaucracy.

Lucy Powell is playing the same silly games with education (I’d have much preferred to see Philipson stay). Burnham may well regret promoting backstabbers who spent most of the previous 18months manoeuvring against Starmer and dumping traditional loyalists/collective government types like Lammy.

On housing specifically the Manchester efforts have not been notably successful and policy based on visible homelessness rarely is. In reality budget spent on “clearing the streets” tends to create more pinch points at the level of invisible homelessness - as you say its far more complex than simply clearing the streets.

What I’m saying is the people who used to have a big family and the respective housing have to be asked to downsize.

To where? Who pays the moving costs? What if there isn't suitable smaller accommodation nearby? What about support networks, healthcare or caring responsibilities? Should older people simply be expected to move regardless of the cost, inconvenience or suitability? Whilst some might hold out most people would downsize if practical solutions were available.

People who earn more should also be asked to leave.

Who is going to leave voluntarily? If they don't, how would you legally require them to leave?

People who have another property anywhere also should not be housed.

Do councils currently give social housing to people who already own another property? Surely that is already taken into account. y.

You say it's common sense, but there are practical questions behind each proposal.

I suppose it's easier to view everyone who needs social housing as human while treating everyone else, especially the elderly and the productive, as a problem to be solved by force. Lets just ignore practical constraints, rather that address them.🙄

It's actually far from commonsense.

ICBW but I think the PP making this original point lives in the same borough as me. By an accident of geography it had to accommodate a very disproportionate number of migrants for a long time, families were larger than the local average. A family with six children will have more points and take priority over the family with three who have long lived in the borough or have connections to the local area (prioritisation was subject to legislations and not something councils could change at the time).

Yes obviously the root is shortage of social housing but in a borough/county receiving a disproportionate share of large numbers of migrants it's impossible to keep up. This creates massive resentment in impacted areas, it was no surprise to me that these areas contained the wards which went Reform at the council elections (interestingly though in each seat the majority was less than the Green vote - they enabled a lot of Reform councillors). These areas are not the MN stereotype of Reform voters - they are traditional WC areas with traditional aspirations and socially more cautious than the MC liberal parts of the borough. They are also not white enclaves - they are very racially diverse, higher percentage than much of London. Reform wasn’t just claiming minority votes, it had minority candidates and housing allocations and immigration was a hot issue. Its an area I know particularly well from canvassing.

That seat is currently held by Labour - a long standing good local MP. However he isn’t getting any younger and it will be target for Reform, not because its the cliche white, depressed WC town/coastal area but because first, second and third generation migrants are on the sharp end of importing cheap labour and removal of local residential requirements for housing.

Not necessary. Because one is a real politician albeit quality unknown yet, and the other is a lazy showman, only interested in his own power, optics and money.

Crayons! Congratulations!

I didn't realise that you had graduated to crayons! I suspect it will give your knuckles a rest from the mud...

Keep up the good work! In no time at all, you'll be writing beautifully in cursive script. Do feel free to reach out for tips.

Put your comment into Chat GPT.

As written, it's not entirely clear what they're asking. There are grammatical errors and missing context. However, the most likely interpretation is this:

"How many new social homes are enough though?"
They're questioning whether simply building more social housing will ever solve the problem.
"As they say, if you build it, they will come."
They're suggesting that increasing the supply of social housing may increase demand for it, so building more won't necessarily eliminate waiting lists.
"It's not building, we need to be clear about the criteria for social housing."
They think the key issue is eligibility, not just supply.
"Is a council house or flat for a family that already had accommodation somewhere else fair?"
This is the ambiguous part.

The person could be asking any of the following:

Is it fair to give social housing to a family that already has suitable accommodation?
Is it fair to give social housing to someone who already owns another property?
Is it fair to give social housing to a family that has moved from another area where they already had accommodation?
Is it fair to allocate social housing to someone who wasn't homeless?

The phrase "already had accommodation somewhere else" doesn't tell you which of those they mean.

So what are they actually asking?

In broad terms, they're asking:

"Should the eligibility rules for social housing be stricter, so that some people who currently receive it would no longer qualify?"

But which people they have in mind is not clear from what they've written.

Copilot made assumptions and answered it.

No, it really isn't clear.

Explain. If you can. If you want to use crayon-level, fine. Explain to a 5 year old.

The policy being promoted sounds a lot like one which was policy for years in Singapore (no idea if its still the case). Everyone lived in banded accommodation and you had to live in the band which aligned with your income. (which often relates to family size). It was probably a policy which could only be enforced in totalitarian state and plenty of European governments regarded it as such (including ours).

It all sounds a bit Brave New World.

In this brave new world of "fairness" are we restricting child birth to machines or the genetically pure? Are we engineering humans based on the role the state would like them to have and to live where the state would like them to live? Will compliance be enforced medically?

People don't seem to care that a cash-poor, lone 85-year-old living in a house valued at £1 million on paper, with four spare bedrooms, is a symptom of a failing system, not the cause of it. As are a couple earning over £100,000 a year who live in a council home under older lifetime tenancy agreements, and a newly arrived undocumented person or family who receives a council home ahead of a UK resident who should be at the top of the housing waiting list.

We need to address the root cause and symptoms, treat everybody as humans not just those in/ in need of social homes.

In your opinion, maybe...