National database for home swaps outlined

4th August 2010

The government has outlined plans for people who live in social housing in England to swap homes more easily with other tenants anywhere in the country.

The National Affordable Home Swap Scheme is a new database of eight million council and social housing tenants in England seeking to exchange homes.

The "Freedom Pass" will allow tenants to move home for work, to be closer to family or for any other reason.

Some privately run databases are already in existence, but this will be the first official website.

It comes after the prime minister indicated he wanted to end the policy of granting council housing "for life".

David Cameron said that it is important that tenants have the opportunity to move to find work, with more flexibility needed in the system.

Housing minister Grant Shapps said the scheme will help resolve the "contradiction" where a quarter of a million families lived in overcrowded accommodation, while more than 400,000 homes were larger than the occupants needed.

Shapps has been holding private talks with key housing groups to persuade them to back the reforms.

Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham councils are to pilot a scheme in which tenants can demand their home to be sold, with the proceeds then used to purchase another property elsewhere.

And the minister also made clear that if he doesn't see improvements in help for tenants to move, he will take tough action to make it happen – including a 'Right to Move' for tenants in law.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said it was "crazy" to subsidise rents for life as somebody had needed help at one point, and said the prime minister had opened a debate on the subject.

He said: "It seems crazy that we spend billions of pounds on affordable homes and we carry on doing that whether the person in the home is actually in need or not.

"That isn't efficient use of the housing we have in this country."

Kay Boycott, from the housing charity Shelter, said: "The prime minister has sidestepped the fundamental cause of our housing crisis, the desperate lack of affordable housing supply.

"Investment in proposals of this kind may not, in reality, offer a cost saving to the public.

"Reviewing tenure could cost local authorities huge amounts of money to implement, creating an army of bureaucrats to undertake these reviews, leaving us no better off and our most vulnerable members of society at risk."




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