Examining Poplar’s decline in council housing over the past 20 years

The third article in our series examining social housing in Poplar, reveals how the number of council houses has halved in the last 20 years, why it happened, and what can be done about it.

The first article in this series exploring social housing in Poplar studied the historical origins of post-war social housing. The results were often controversial, but they were built from a utopian vision. 

In the second article, new housing developments across Poplar and the Isle of Dogs were investigated. It found that affordable housing on the developments is consistently being built in the least desirable locations alongside main roads, in areas with poor sunlight, and some still with ‘poor doors’. 

This article takes stock of the issue of quantity. There is simply not enough social housing across our borough for people who need it. Under the current system, social housing’s development and management increasingly take place outside of the council. 

Data from Poplar LDN‘s freedom of information request to Tower Hamlets Council shows they now only run 11,485 homes across the borough. This is the lowest level for 20 years.

The quantity of social housing is down from 23,481 in 2003/2004 to just 11,485 homes from 2023/2024. The amount of council housing has halved over the past 20 years. 

Social housing numbers have decreased every single year since 2003 in Tower Hamlets except for two, 2011/2012 and 2019/2020. In 2011/2012 there was a net increase of 15 homes, while in 2019/2020 there was just one more home than the previous year. These two slight increases do not change the overall trend. Less and less social housing is managed by the council.

There are a couple of reasons for this rapid loss of homes. 

Council housing can be demolished and not replaced, as is the case of Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar. Originally managed by the council, it is under demolition and will be replaced by a mixed private and affordable development managed by Swan Housing. 

Elsewhere, the Council transfers council housing stock to a housing association. This remains a form of social housing, but instead of being managed directly by the council, it is instead managed by the housing association. 

Balfron Tower is one such case. It was built by the Greater London Authority before being transferred to Tower Hamlets Council. In 2007 Poplar HARCA took over managing the block from the council after a residents’ ballot approved the switch.

Even more of an impact, countless council homes have been lost to the right-to-buy scheme, something that affects all boroughs. Introduced in 1980, it allowed residents to buy their council homes at a significantly reduced rate. By 1986 discounts for four council residents could be as high as 70%. As of the following year, over one million council homes had been off across the UK. 

Recognising the need for homes, in the Council’s 2022-2026 strategic plan Mayor of Tower Hamlets Luftur Rahman said his aim was to ‘tackle the housing crisis’ and he ‘committed to building 1,000 social homes a year’.

However, it remains to be seen if this goal will be met. New developments built by the council take time and struggle to deliver homes on the scale we need.

Even if that goal is met, building social homes is not necessarily the same as building council homes.

As explored in this first article, in the mid to late 20th century large-scale social housing was built by the government and then typically managed by the council. 

Nowadays, new social housing is predominantly built by private developers. 

All new housing developments are supposed to include a set amount of affordable housing. Typically there is a requirement set at 35% of housing on an individual development site to be affordable housing. A further breakdown stipulates how much of this percentage should be one, two, three, or larger bedroom housing. 

To better understand this, we must understand the difference between social, council, and affordable housing.

Affordable is in the name. It is a broad term used to mean housing that is built to be offered more affordably. Either to buy or rent at below-market value. 

There are several different types of affordable housing. Intermediate housing is one subset of this, where housing is offered to rent at 80% of the market rate. Shared ownership is another form where you purchase part of a property and then rent the other part, reducing the upfront costs of owning a property. The London Living Rent is a London-specific form of affordable housing. Under that scheme, the average monthly rent for a 2-bedroom home in 2024-25 is around £1,240 a month, though this number varies by borough.

Another is social housing, which is housing rented to people in need of housing at a lower rate. It is rented from a housing association or the council. London wide the average social rent was £127 per week in 2022/23.

Council housing is social housing that is run by the council.

New-built social housing is unlikely to be managed by the council, instead by a housing association. In Poplar, Poplar HARCA is by far the largest. The majority of social housing in Poplar and across Tower Hamlets is now managed by various housing associations. There are more than forty operating across our borough. 

These are registered non-profit organisations that provide social housing. While cooperating closely with local authorities and often utilising public funds, they are private organisations.

While the target is 35% for new developments, this is not always met. 

Developers argue on profitability grounds or for other reasons to keep the percentage of social housing lower. They make the argument that if the affordable housing percentage increases the development would not be profitable enough. 

The new 56-58 Marsh Wall is one such example where developers argued against including affordable housing.

The 46-story tower consisting of 795 ‘co-living’ studios contains no affordable housing at all.

In the planning application developers argued that because the development ‘does not meet minimum housing space standards and is focused on single occupancy tenancies it is not considered suitable as a form of affordable housing itself.’

The architect team behind the development describes the planning process on their website as ‘a meticulous collaborative effort with local authorities and that the development ‘aligns with the borough’s vision and future urban development goals’.

At an April 2023 meeting of the Strategic Development Committee, the Tower Hamlets Council body that approves or rejects planning applications, the 46-story tower was approved. At the meeting four voted for, four against, and one abstained. The committee chair gave a tiebreaker vote for the development, allowing it to go ahead.

As no affordable housing was included, instead a system where developers pay the council a fee in lieu of building affordable housing was used. Over a multi-year period, developers will pay the council almost £48 million. This number is estimated from 50% of the market value of 35% of the development units.

This money is supposed to be used by the council towards developing affordable housing elsewhere in the borough, but how and where it is to be used remains unclear and it opens a risk that extenuating circumstances in the future could affect how it is spent.

The other issue with handing over social housing development to private developers is the quality of housing. As the previous article in this series showed, private housing developers led by profit consistently locate social housing in less desirable locations. Alongside the A12 or DLR tracks, or at the bottom of high rises. Even using much-maligned poor doors on some new developments. 

Councilors have raised concerns about the health effects of social housing being located in locations with poorer sunlight and air quality.

Beyond private developers, housing associations don’t just manage social housing, they also take on the developer role themselves. 

The Aberfeldy redevelopment in Poplar is one example. Poplar HARCA has received planning approval for a 1,600-home development. A mix of private and social homes, 35% of the site would be affordable. 

The transition from council to Swan Housing at Robin Hood Gardens highlights the risks of councils no longer managing housing. Only 79 of Robin Hood Gardens’ former residents have been accommodated in two new towers by the estate. Some were forced out of London because their compensation for their homes was below local market rates, making it unaffordable to stay.

Others opted not to stay in the smaller housing association units compared to the larger Robin Hood Gardens homes.

Opportunities exist to reverse the decline in council-managed social housing. Tower Hamlets Community Housing is a housing association that manages some 3,000 homes. The possibility of the council taking over their stock was raised after THCH rating by the Regulator of Social Housing was downgraded.

At the time the Mayor of Tower Hamlets Luftur Rahman said “I would love nothing more than for all the housing stock in the borough to be owned and run by this council.”

However, in the end the Council rejected the possibility of taking over the housing association. This was due to their levels of debt. 

In our private developer-led system, this wish seems unlikely that Mayor Rahman’s stated wish will come to pass.

Indeed, this current system seems to be a major factor in why there are not enough social homes, of any form, to meet our needs. 

Over 23,000 households are on the waiting list to get housing in Tower Hamlets. 

It is now standard to wait at least two years for a home, with 91% of people in Tower Hamlets waiting at least this long according to data from 2021. However, it can be much longer. Almost 30% of people on the waiting list for council housing have been waiting for a decade.

The stark reality of this situation is made clear by Tower Hamlets Council themselves. On their website where you can apply for social housing, it warns: 

“Most people who join the housing register will never be offered a social housing tenancy.”

Poplar and Tower Hamlets once pioneered social housing. The Boundary Estate in Bethnal Green was London’s first council estate, built over 100 years ago. In Poplar, developments like Balfron Tower, Robin Hood Gardens, and Chrisp Street Market were built with grand ideas and utopian ideals. Now, we have retracted to a private-led model that is not only failing to solve our housing crisis, is actively contributing to it. So where is the solution? 

Shelter, the homelessness and housing charity, offers a simultaneously simple yet seemingly hard-to-execute solution – ‘building’.

Osama Bhutta, Shelter’s Director of Campaigns Policy, and Communication lays the blame for our current housing crisis on the government. He says ‘Decades of failure by successive governments to build genuinely affordable social homes have left us with the housing emergency we see today.’

He adds ‘We’ve been knocking down and selling off more social homes than we’ve been building for too long.’

The only solution in his view is building. Nationwide, he calls on the national government to build ‘90,000 new social homes a year for the next ten years’ to end our current crisis.

In Poplar, once celebrated as the pioneers of social housing, the decline of council-managed social housing has halved the stock over 20 years, exacerbated by demolition, privatisation, and the right-to-buy scheme. This shift to private developers and housing associations fails to meet the growing demand, with over 23,000 households on the waiting list. Despite local authorities’ plans, including Mayor Luftur Rahman’s goal of 1,000 new social homes annually, challenges remain. Private developers often provide less desirable housing, and fall short of affordable housing targets. Addressing this crisis requires substantial government intervention. Perhaps Sir Kier Starmer’s pledge to build 1.5 million new homes will go towards this.

Read the first two parts of this series here: Streets in the sky: The utopian dreams of Poplar’s social housing and Poor doors, busy roads, and little sunlight: How affordable housing gets the brunt end