The comments from the CIH were in response to an inquiry from The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Council and Social Housing (APPG) into the obstacles to council housing delivery. 

One of the conclusions made from the CIH in its response to the inquiry was that partnership working is key to helping councils to develop more housing.

The profession body is a member of the steering group for the APPG for Council and Social Housing.

The CIH has said that councils play a crucial position in addressing the housing emergency, both as landlords (for stock-holding authorities) and facilitators within the housing system. 

The professional body has said its members working in local authorities are keen to support housebuilding and address homelessness, but local authorities’ finances, resources, and capacity have significantly declined. 

The CIH also said local authorities feel they are dealing with a number of crises at once and attempting to stretch limited resources to tackle increasing needs, causing local authorities to frequently have limited abilities to deliver new council housing, with budgets focusing on maintenance and facing the burden of debt costs.

It said that depleting resources, finances, and capacity within local authorities are major obstacles to boosting council housebuilding and must be addressed via various strategies, such as addressing historic debt and access to low-interest loans. 

The CIH also said long-term policy and financial certainty are key for councils to focus on housebuilding.

It recommends that the Treasury and Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) are both tasked with urgently looking into these issues to enable council house building.