This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

The government would be "incomprehensibly stupid" not to consider capping private sector rents, according to the chief executive of the National Housing Federation.

David Orr told delegates at the federation's annual conference in Birmingham on Thursday that radical thinking was needed to address the UK's housing crisis, but too few politicians and housing providers were thinking long-term.

New figures show that private rents are close to a record high but Orr said the government was frightened even to start a conversation about capping private rents, despite 10,000 new housing benefits claims every month by working households as rents continue to rise and wages to fall.

On 9 September, writing for the Guardian Housing Network Orr said politicians at both central and local government level needed to be bold. "We need to ask some of the big questions that are deemed to be politically off limits," he said.

At the housing conference, Orr called for challenging conversations and new ideas, including a potential move away from arms-length management organisations to what he called "proper municipal housing companies."

He also said it was time to move the planning system out of the hands of councillors who were "conflicted" between their role in long-term place-shaping and short-term politics.

Planning, he said, should be visionary and implemented by officers, rather than councillors, whose re-election often rested on a tiny number of people, making it difficult to get large-scale housebuilding under way in many parts of the country.

Orr said such a move would not be undemocratic, pointing out that 30 years ago, council housing was allocated by councillors. That had now been delegated to officers and the same should be done with planning, he said.

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