Social housing
The social housing sector is under-funded. Currently, there are very limited investment options to improve housing stock. These involve privatisation or part privatisation of stock or the service through stock transfers, arms length management organisations or PFI. There is no 'fourth option' to directly invest in housing.
The lack of funding to invest in existing housing or to increase the supply of affordable housing has led to an acute shortage of housing in many parts of the country, with growing social and economic problems, such as increased homelessness and increasing numbers of people unable to afford to buy or rent a home.
UNISON is campaigning for a level playing field for local authorities to invest in existing housing as well as to be involved in government plans to increase the supply of affordable housing.
For more information:
Hands off our housing - UNISON's campaign against large scale voluntary transfers of council housing stock.
CONTACT DETAILS
• The UNISON contact for the Positively Public campaign is Margie Jaffe.
Positively Public
1 Mabledon Place
London WC1H 9AJ
Email us
Recent documents
The role of private finance in public investment
The report shows that PFI is not value for money, despite the coalition government backing this form of investment. It warns that the cost of PFI has risen astronomically following the financial crisis and the gap between the rate at which the government and the private sector can borrow has widened dramatically.
The role of private finance in public investment
UNISON Response to Lord's Inquiry on PFI
UNISON's submission to the House of Lord's Inquiry into PFI highlights our concerns around the methodology of PFI, risk transfer, high costs, value for money and workforce issues.
UNISON Response to the Select Committee on Economic Affairs - House of Lords
Reclaiming the Initiative - putting the public back into PFI
The report catalogues how ever-growing billions of public money has become locked into financing massively expensive PFI schemes. The Government has committed taxpayers, for a generation to come, to a bill of more than £217bn worth of repayments between now and 2033/34 on just £64bn of PFI projects. PFI’s reliance on the private sector was supposed to give public building programmes more rigour and strength but, as the union’s latest report - “Putting the Public Back into PFI” – shows, in reality it has exposed them to greater hazards and weaknesses. Public projects have been tainted by private failure
Acrobat PDF version
Transforming Community Services
This factsheet outlines the process for implementing the Transforming Community Services programme for primary care trusts.
Transforming community services factsheet
