Labour’s cautious manifesto offers hints of real ‘change’

Posted: June 13, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Fire safety, Housebuilding, Leasehold, Planning, Private renting |Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

Given a backdrop of grim economic times and successive election defeats, this was always going to be a cautious Labour manifesto.

So the good news is that housing features much more prominently than it did in the plans that the party has laid out in the last few months. It had only a walk on part in Labour’s  five missions, six first steps and 10 ‘policies to change Britain’ –

The tone was set by one of the four speakers who introduced Keir Starmer. Daniel rents a one-bedroom flat in east London with his partner and two children and said he was backing Labour because of its plans to build more homes and support first-time buyers.

The manifesto itself contains few new policies and no new money but there are some interesting hints about what Labour might do in office.

The promise of 1.5 million new homes in the next parliament forms a key part of the section on kickstarting economic growth, with the party arguing that: ‘Britain is hampered by a planning regime that means we struggle to build either the infrastructure or housing the country needs.

And Labour directly challenges the Conservatives by arguing that ‘the dream of homeownership is now out of reach for too many young people’.

However, the manifesto does not mention the target of 70 per cent home ownership that Starmer set in his party conference speech only 18 months ago.  

The planning agenda includes reforming the National Planning Policy Framework and restoring mandatory housing targets, but also ‘tough action’ against councils that drag their feet.

The language here feels more muscular than before: ‘We will ensure local communities continue to shape housebuilding in their area, but where necessary Labour will not be afraid to make full use of intervention powers to build the houses we need. ‘

That would be backed from the centre by a strategic approach to green belt designation and the release of ‘grey belt’ land and at the regional level by ‘new mechanisms for cross-boundary strategic planning’.

And the state would intervene with ‘a new generation of new towns’ (without saying how many) as well as urban extensions and regeneration projects to form ‘part of a series of large-scale new communities across England’.

The party would also reform compulsory purchase to speed up building and fund infrastructure – but a key change on the price paid for land looks like it could be more limited than suggested in previous reports: ‘We will take steps to ensure that for specific types of development schemes, landowners are awarded fair compensation rather than inflated prices based on the prospect of planning permission. ‘

By comparison with the Conservatives’ pledge of 1.6 million homes, the route map to Labour’s 1.5 million looks much more detailed.

However, that’s more than can be said for its repeated pledge that: ‘Labour will deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation.’

It goes without saying that a cautious and fully-costed manifesto will include no new money and no specific target that might imply any.

Instead the party would strengthen planning obligations to deliver more affordable homes and ‘make changes to the Affordable Homes Programme to ensure that it delivers more homes from existing funding’.

The second bit seems directly contradicted two sentences later. If ‘Labour will [quite correctly] prioritise the building of new social rented homes’ surely that means there will be grant per home and so fewer affordable homes overall?

Part of the answer may come via reform of right to buy by ‘reviewing’ increased discounts introduced in 2012 and ‘increasing protections on newly-built social housing’.

The glass half-empty view would say there is very little to suggest how that biggest increase in a generation can be delivered, but the glass half-full one would see the fact that it is mentioned so explicitly as a hopeful sign for the future.

Scaled-back plans for decarbonising existing homes now amount to a £6.6 billion Warm Homes Plan over the course of the parliament that would upgrade five million homes.

Housing also features prominently in the section on breaking down the barriers to opportunity, with pledges to finish the job on renter and leaseholder reform that was abandoned or watered down by the Conservatives.

Private renters are promised the abolition of Section 21 and the extension of Awaab’s Law plus a new pledge in obscure language ‘to empower them to challenge unreasonable rent increases’.

On the day before the seventh anniversary of Grenfell, leaseholders are promised a review of how to protect them from building safety costs, steps to ‘accelerate the pace of remediation’ and ‘a renewed focus on ensuring those responsible for the building safety crisis pay to put it right’.

On leasehold more generally, there is an emphatic pledge that ‘Labour will act where the Conservatives have failed and finally bring the feudal leasehold system to an end’.

Action would include enacting Law Commission reforms in full, further steps to ban new leasehold flats and make commonhold the default tenure and ‘tackling unregulated and unaffordable ground rent charges’.

All of this is good, even if much of it would only implement what the Conservatives promised in their 2019 manifesto and are promising again this time around.

What seems clear is that Labour is taking housing much more seriously now than the last time it returned to power in 1997.

Labour caution means that there are few specifics beyond that 1.5 million new homes but targets like that will be important if it wins because they help drive activity in Whitehall.

It’s also important to remember that victory would only ensure the first half of ‘the decade of national renewal’ that Labour wants to see.

That left me hoping that the party would go further in this manifesto and hint at its plans for the longer term.

On child poverty we are promised an ‘ambitious strategy’ to reduce it and a review of universal credit ‘so that it makes work pay and reduces poverty’ as well as action on evictions, fuel poverty and zero hours contracts.

However, we already knew that Labour has decided it does not have enough money to abolish the two-child limit and you will look in vain for commitment to address the impact of 14 years of welfare ‘reform’.

If specifics were too much to hope for, how about a hint of action ‘when resources allow’?

The section on homelessness is more hopeful, with the manifesto (rightly) highlighting the record of the last Labour government and the increases in rough sleeping and hidden homelessness seen since 2010.

It goes on: ‘Building on the lessons of our past, Labour will develop a new cross-government strategy, working with mayors and councils across the country, to put Britain back on track to ending homelessness.’

If we can ignore for a moment that housing is devolved, and Scotland and Wales already have strategies of their own, this is the kind of institutional change at the heart of government that has real potential and which proved its worth after 1997.

If the jury is still out on some of Labour plans, it’s a sign that ‘change’ can – and should – be more than just a party slogan.   

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