The Government came under widespread attack yesterday over its proposals for jobless people to lose entitlement to council housing.

Caroline Flint, the Housing Minister, infuriated organisations representing the homeless by suggesting that any new council house tenant should have actively to look for work as a condition of getting a home.

She also said that the unemployed should have better access on housing estates to Jobcentres and skills training to address what she called the collapse in the numbers in work. In her first speech since her appointment, Ms Flint said that there was an urgent need to break the link between social housing and unemployment.

The proportion of council estate residents who are out of work has risen from one in five in 1983 to one in two today. “The link between social housing and worklessness is stark,” Ms Flint told the Fabian Society. “I am concerned about what has been called a collapse in the number of people in council housing in work over the past 25 years. Council housing was originally somewhere which brought together people from different backgrounds and professions but this has declined. We need to think radically and start a national debate about whether we can reverse this trend and have strong, diverse estates with a mix of people.”

Ms Flint proposed that all new council tenants should have to sign a “commitment contract” to seek extra help with finding work, including access to mentors and skills training.

She also suggested that jobless people in council housing would be able to move to other estates more easily and that they should have access to shared equity homes.

A similar proposal – the Foyer scheme – has already been piloted in hostels throughout the country, where young people are refused a bed unless they sign a contract agreeing to look for work.

But Shelter, the housing charity, condemned the new scheme. “Any government proposal that could mean people being thrown out of their homes for not finding a job must be fiercely resisted,” said Adam Sampson, Shelter’s chief executive. “It would mean a return to the workhouse, the destruction of families and communities and would add to the thousands who are already homeless. Making people homeless means they do not have an address, which makes it even more difficult to find work.”

Grants Shapps, the Tory housing spokesman, accused Ms Flint of trying to grab the headlines with proposals that could not be legally enforced. “Ministers and local councils have a statutory duty to house homeless families with children and so they can’t boot them out of their houses without then providing alternative accommodation,” he said.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of the union Unison, said: “Council house tenants are being stigmatised. They are increasingly the poorest families and the housing is located in the most deprived neighbourhoods.”

Leslie Morphy, chief executive at Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people, said: “Our experience at Crisis shows that encouragement and enablement – and not threats – are the way to help homeless and vulnerable people to build independent lives.”

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