Housing in the elections
Posted: May 1, 2026 Filed under: Rent control, Scotland, Wales Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Significant change could be on the way for housing in the wake of next week’s elections.
The obvious place to start is Welsh politics, which seems set for a major change that could end 100 years of Labour dominance and see another party running the Welsh Government for the first time since devolution.
Recent polls have Plaid Cymru and Reform running neck and neck and a victory for either would take housing in new but opposite directions.
With a new electoral system adding extra uncertainty, Plaid looks favourite to form a new government but would probably need formal or informal support from at least one other party.
That result would bring some continuity for social housing: the last Welsh Government started with a cooperation agreement between Labour and Plaid, the two parties have similar targets for new social homes and the change might be felt more in details such as the energy standards that apply to them.
But Plaid is also proposing two significant changes with the potential to rewire the wider housing system.
Read the rest of this entry »The legacies of the Cutteslowe Walls
Posted: April 7, 2026 Filed under: Council housing, History, Housebuilding Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Walk down Wentworth Road in north Oxford and you will come across the scene of one of the most famous episodes in housing history.
It’s a story that has come to symbolise the class divisions of the past but there are also contemporary resonances for housing and society more generally.
About halfway down the street you’ll notice something strange: the house numbers suddenly go out of sequence and the street name changes to Aldrich Road. Look at the wall of the house opposite and you will see a blue plaque commemorating what happened there in 1934.
The story is very well told in a new series on Radio Four. The Shadow of the Cuttleslowe Walls does much more than just delve into the past, it also looks at the present and what has happened to the area since tells us about housing now.
Read the rest of this entry »Spring Statement highlights Autumn to do list
Posted: March 4, 2026 Filed under: Council housing, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Local government, Temporary accommodation Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing
There were by choice no policy announcements in the Spring Statement but the message about the government’s housing priorities could hardly have been clearer.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves had deliberately downplayed the significance of the statement, which was meant to be an update on the public finances rather than a full-blown Budget.
That meant that – with one exception – there were no background documents to wade through to find hidden announcements and hints about future policy direction.]
The exception came from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), and the first message was about the key manifesto target of 1.5 additional homes in this parliament.
Not a chance, says the OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook: in the five years from 2025/26 to 2030/31 the independent watchdog forecasts there will be just 1.3 million net additions across the UK (30,000 higher than it forecast in November).
Net additions will fall in line with subdued recent housing starts to just 220,000 in 2026/27, it says, but then rise sharply to just over 305,000 by 2030/31 ‘reflecting the impact of planning reforms’.
That may sound closer than we thought to 1.5 million and the government will welcome the acknowledgement of the impact of its policies.
But eagle-eyed readers will already have spotted that the target is for England whereas the forecast is for the UK and that they cover different time periods.
Adjusting for homes built in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland only increases the size of the shortfall: England-only net additions will total around 1.1 million, 400,000 short of the target.
Read the rest of this entry »Under starter’s orders
Posted: January 19, 2026 Filed under: Housebuilding | Tags: Robert Jenrick, Steve Reed Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
With neat synergy, the housing secretary and one of his more notable predecessors are both boasting about their record using perhaps the most inaccurate housing statistic out there.
First Steve Reed threw his ‘build baby build’ cap into the air at the news of an increase in housing starts.
‘Thanks to our changes to planning laws we’re now seeing the green shoots of recovery,’ he said, ‘with an 18 per cent increase in work starting on new homes compared to the previous year.’
Then Robert Jenrick, the Conservative defector to Reform, took time out from making other political news to boast about his record six years (and six housing secretaries) ago.
‘When I was housing secretary, I felt passionately that we should get young people on to the housing ladder,’ he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg in an interview following his defection to Reform. ‘What did I do? I got housing starts in this country to the highest level in my lifetime. Way, way, way above what you see today under Steve Reed or Angela Rayner.’
Both boasts have a grain of truth in them – but both need to be accompanied by more than a few pinches of salt.
Read the rest of this entry »Small steps towards ending homelessness
Posted: December 15, 2025 Filed under: Bed and breakfast, Homelessness, Scotland, Temporary accommodation, Wales Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
For all the positive proposals in the new homelessness strategy for England, there are still some big gaps to fill if it is to achieve its ambitions.
Nobody would disagree with the ‘long-term vision’ to ‘end homelessness and rough sleeping and ensure that everyone has access to a safe, decent and secure home’ but that future still looks a distant prospect.
If the logic of making the shift from crisis management to prevention is undeniable, it remains to be seen whether the strategy will be enough to fix the crisis.
And even if all the proposals are implemented in full, England will still be some way behind Scotland and Wales in ending homelessness (or, in practice, ensuring that homelessness is rare, brief and unrepeated).
Read the rest of this entry »Budget leaves big gaps to be filled
Posted: November 27, 2025 Filed under: Benefit cap, Budget, Housebuilding, Local housing allowance, Rents Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Even if it had not been leaked in advance, this Budget could have been defined as much by what was not in it as what was.
The astonishing mistake made by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in uploading a report containing all the key measures before chancellor Rachel Reeves had started speaking came after weeks of well-sourced stories about them.
We already knew the headline measures: the abolition of the two-child limit; a council tax surcharge on high-value homes; and freezing income tax thresholds.
They were joined on the day by a private landlord tax (higher rates of income tax on income from property), confirmation of more money for the Warm Homes Plan and a welcome move to tackle the ‘benefit trap’ facing tenants in supported and temporary accommodation.
But the Budget delayed one of the decisions most eagerly awaited by social landlords: they will now have to wait until January for the government’s final decision on rent convergence, in effect how quickly they can increase their lowest rents above the CPI plus 1 per cent limit.
Three months on from the consultation closing, the Budget background document explains that: ‘While the government remains committed to implementing social rent convergence, it is important to take the time to get the precise details right, taking account of the benefits to the supply and quality of social and affordable housing, the impact on rent payers and affordability.’
And there was no mention at all of the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) freeze, perhaps the housing issue raised by more organisations than anything else in the run-up to the Budget.
Read the rest of this entry »
Jules Birch 