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It’s Time for a Social Rent Revolution!
- Social Homes 4 Manchester
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
The winds of political change were felt through the Council Chamber at Manchester Town Hall on Friday afternoon as the Manchester Social Housing Commission launched their final report and recommendations to a room of over 100 housing and planning professionals, councillors, officers, housing activists, residents and communities.
Chaired by The Right Reverend Dr David Walker, Bishop of Manchester, and opened by Cllr Bev Craig, Leader of Manchester City Council, the event began with powerful community testimonies. One single mum wept as she described her experiences of fleeing domestic abuse with her two disabled and asthmatic children only to find herself stuck in poor quality damp and mouldy private sector accommodation having to carry her wheelchair-bound child up and down the stairs several times a day to use the toilet in a house with no aids and adaptations.
Vicky Leigh, a Commissioner and Assistant Principal of Manchester Academies Trust, described the experiences of families supported through their At Home project through which they have supported over 300 families. Vicky talked of a family who have been able to stay together in the same community in secure tenancy social rent accommodation in an area where many families have been and continue to be displaced because of the lack of decent and affordable homes. Vicky described Clare as “one of the lucky ones”. She has one daughter in year 10 living at home with her, and two older daughters, one living with her, and another living nearby with her own family in their own secure social rent home. Living close together means they can all support each other with school runs and childcare. On their journey to this situation however, they had lived in such poor-quality social housing that their ceiling collapsed and the bathroom from the flat above fell through into their home.
Lina Dowouna and Reverend Kate Gray of Wythenshawe Central Network shared their experiences of tokenistic resident involvement and consultation processes in the latest wave of regeneration in Wythenshawe Town Centre. Reverend Kate explained that Wythenshawe Central Network know their own communities and know what kinds of tools and techniques work best, yet barely any local representatives have attended the workshops and meetings WCN have organised to gather the community’s views and priorities and share inspiring ideas for the future. This needs to change to rebuild trust:
“It really matters that this isn’t being done by the council. That makes a difference to people who feel excluded and done to. And I am sad to say that in the conversations that we have had in Wythenshawe, many local councillors are consistently absent from those conversations. And I want to challenge you to attend, and listen, and take part. That will help build active trust.”
Pledges to action
Bernard Sudlow of Hulme Community Forum and Sue Thomas O’Flaherty of Lifted Carers and Wythenshawe Central Network put a series of asks to key stakeholders who had agreed to participate as panellists at the event.
All panellists including Steve Fyfe for GMCA; Cllr Bev Craig, Leader of the Council; Cllr Gavin White, Executive Member for Housing and Regeneration; Matt Jones, interim Chair of the Manchester Housing Providers Partnership and Charlie Norman, Chair of the GM Housing Providers Partnership pledged to work with Commissioners to establish a Social Homes for Greater Manchester Scrutiny Panel focused on ensuring the Commission’s recommendations are taken forward in Manchester and across GM, that will meet quarterly until the next General Election.
Bishop David thanked Afzal Khan MP and Hannah Spencer MP for their attendance (despite having to leave early for constituency surgeries) and explained he will be personally following up with the Greater Manchester All Party Parliamentary Group of MPs to explore how to advance the Commission’s national policy recommendations.
In addition to participation in the scrutiny panel, Matt Jones Interim Chair of the Manchester Housing Providers Partnership and Charlie Norman, Chair of the GM Housing Providers Partnership expressed their full support and pledged to work with partners to ensure repairs are being carried out in a timely fashion and investment is made to remove dangerous damp and mould; and to ensure that providers are limiting demolitions to cases of last resort.
Cllr Bev Craig and Cllr Gavin White acknowledged that there was more work to do to ensure Manchester City Council works in collaboration with communities when planning for local areas. In addition to participation in the scrutiny panel, they committed to working with Social Homes for Manchester to co-create a policy on Community Led Development and expressed their political commitment to achieving a target of 30% social rent in the new Local Plan for Manchester.
Cllr White said:
“When we go to Regulation 19, we need that feedback: give us that evidence to present to the inspector to ensure that we can get the Local Plan through. It is the political aspiration to get 30% social rent entirely but that’s what we need in Regulation 19.”
Addressing inequalities
Dr Cordelle Ofori, Director of Public Health for Manchester City Council, who was not asked to make any pledges but rather invited to share her expertise on the links between health and housing inequality said:
“I am really supportive of this because the right to health and the right to a home go hand in hand. In Manchester […] between the poorest and the most affluent parts of the city, for boys it’s a 9-year gap in life expectancy and for girls it’s a 7-year gap. That’s completely unacceptable …But the things that make the biggest difference to health inequality are the things that sit outside of health services, and housing is a really important part of that […] If all of your money is going on keeping a roof over your head, you haven’t got much left for everything else. It’s also important for children’s education, it’s important for being able to get more training to move up the job ladder and get a better job, it’s important for so many things.”
Cordelle highlighted Making Manchester Fairer’s three key focus areas of (i) Shifting power to communities; (ii) Tackling poverty including fuel poverty; and (iii) Tackling racism and discrimination. Cordelle highlighted how racially minoritised groups are more likely to live in social housing, more likely to live in poor quality housing, and more likely to be in housing that is overcrowded; and the need to address the particular housing needs of disabled families. She called on all partners engaged in taking this work forwards to think about: what are the implications specifically for different population groups in Manchester amidst these recommendations; and how can we ensure these inequalities are addressed in the actions that are taken.
Celebrations and next steps
Several contributors celebrated the approach that has been taken by the Commission which you can read about in the concluding pages of the main report which shares detail on the methodology, challenges, and success factors as evaluated by Commissioners.
Bishop David thanked colleagues at Manchester City Council for their support and engagement without whom the process would not have been possible and added:
“This has been a really exceptional engagement for me. I have sat on a large number of housing commissions over a large number of years…and yes, you have meetings and you visit a few places, and you produce a report and present your recommendations, and yeah we’re doing all of that. But the distinctive thing about this, is the extent to which it’s been the voices of people living in social housing or living in estates around the city who have driven the process forward. That has been unique. I’ve long been committed to what they call coproduction and codesign, but I’ve never seen it done so determinedly as the Manchester Social Housing Commission has done it.”
The SH4M coalition is the legacy structure which will now take forward the Commission’s findings and recommendations and seek to maximise implementation, working always in partnership with community leaders across Manchester, Greater Manchester and England. The coalition will publish an annual progress tracker each year at least until the next General Election.
Together, Commissioners have met with Ministers, ministry teams, representatives of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Greater Manchester, and special advisers; have submitted written evidence to successive national consultations and audit committees; and have presented evidence to Lords and MPs. Partner organisations such as Mustard Tree met directly with Angela Rayner in 2024 to share on the extent and impacts of the housing and homelessness crisis in Manchester in advance of the April 2025 budget.
Importantly, throughout these engagements we have developed new connections and relationships that have supported ongoing advocacy, parliamentary questions and ministry negotiation on community rights in planning, and new opportunities for joint working, including: the Women’s Budget Group on the gendered impacts of the housing and climate crisis; and the Lloyds Local Collaborations programme.
A key request to the GM APPG is to work with SH4M to establish a working group to advocate for the reforms needed nationally to enable accelerated delivery of ecologically sustainable social rent homes across Greater Manchester. We look forward to working with Manchester City Council and partners across Greater Manchester through the new Social Homes for GM Scrutiny Panel and a wealth of other legacy projects. These include: new neighbourhood planning processes in Hulme and Moss Side; work to explore Community Land Trust pilots in Miles Platting and Wythenshawe; a network of organised communities with a deeper understanding of housing and planning systems and potential community led placemaking innovations just as five Manchester Pride in Place areas have been announced; and a new transparency and accountability data portal project with GMCA. A new Social Homes for Trafford coalition has also launched; and we are keen to share learning with groups across the city-region and nationally.
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