Posted: December 11, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Grenfell Tower, Regulation, Social housing |
Originally published as a column in the December issue of Inside Housing.
What’s the difference between a ‘new deal for social housing’ and a ‘charter for social housing residents’?
The shift in language between the green and white papers certainly seems to signal a change in emphasis – and not in a good way if you are old enough to remember John Major’s Citizens’ Charter and Cones Hotline from the 1990s.
White paper plans to strengthen consumer regulation, make it easier for tenants to complain to the ombudsman and introduce independent inspection of landlords look generally positive – even the Conservatives are essentially recreating the system they scrapped so confidently in 2010. The regulator will also get new powers over for-profit landlords.
But for me what’s really telling is what has gone missing between the green paper and the white paper and what that says about the government’s wider vision for social housing.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: November 12, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing market, Tax |
Originally published as a column for Inside Housing on November 12.
When the pandemic is eventually over, one of the big political questions will be how the government will go about recouping the huge sums pumped into keeping the economy going.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak told the Conservative conference that he believes it is his ‘sacred duty’ to balance the books. Even before the costs of the second wave, a document leaked from the Treasury in May suggested that tax rises or spending cuts equivalent to £25-£30 billion would be needed.
However, Mr Sunak is boxed in by manifesto promises not to increase income tax, VAT and national insurance and not to scrap the triple lock on pensions.
Cutting public spending will not be easy either. If anything the pressure will be the other way as the government looks to implement its levelling up agenda.
That applies even to the depressingly familiar remedy of cutting benefits, with calls for temporary increases in universal credit and local housing allowance to be made permanent set to grow as unemployment rises.
However, housing could still be a key battleground when it comes to tax and areas not covered by those manifesto promises. So far, it’s been another cost to the Treasury, with the £3.8 billon earmarked for the stamp duty holiday, but sooner or later attention will turn to the other side of the ledger.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: October 26, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning | Tags: localism, Planning white paper |
Originally published by Inside Housing on October 26.
Remember when a newly elected Conservative-led government was determined to put an end to top-down planning and scrap Labour’s ‘Stalinist’ housebuilding targets?
It may be only 10 years ago but all that ‘localism’ seems a long time ago in the wake of a planning white paper that Boris Johnson says will deliver ‘radical reform unlike anything we have seen since the Second World War’.
But that 2010 rhetoric from Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps is a reminder of the tensions that are inherent in the conflict between Conservative determination to deliver more homes from the centre and the conservative impulse to resist them at a local level.
For all the lofty promises about ‘big, bold steps so that we in this country can finally build the homes we all need and the future we all want to see’, that struggle has never gone away.
In the final few weeks of consultation on the white paper, ministers were already signalling a u-turn on a key part of it after a revolt by Tory backbenchers.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: October 6, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Decarbonisation, Fire safety, Mortgages, Stamp duty |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing on October 6.
You are prime minister. You have £5.8 billion to spend on housing. What do you do?
Before you answer there is a catch. You are a Tory prime minister. So this has to be all about home ownership.
This is not about the Affordable Homes Programme either – although the modest increase in that is tilted towards home ownership too.
You may have guessed by now that this is about decisions already taken by Boris Johnson’s chancellor Rishi Sunak, decisions that are looking worse and worse the more time goes on.
That thought was prompted by the only ‘new’ idea that I’ve seen emerging from the Conservative Party conference: a plan to create ‘Generation Buy’ by encouraging low-deposit mortgages to help young people on to the housing ladder.
The idea revealed by Mr Johnson in a Telegraph interview on Saturday is not especially new – essentially it’s a rehash of the mortgage guarantee part of Help to Buy and it harks back to the days when Gordon Brown wanted to encourage long-term, fixed-rate mortgages – and it seems to be inspired by a report published by the Centre for Policy Studies last month.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: September 29, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Legal, Private renting, Section 21, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for insidehousing.co.uk.
In March housing secretary Robert Jenrick promised that nobody will lose their home because of the pandemic. In June that turned out to mean that nobody will lose their home ‘this summer’.
The evictions moratorium was extended twice at the 11th hour but there was no movement this time and it ended last Monday – a day before the Autumnal equinox – with an empty promise of ‘comprehensive support for renters’.
If the moratorium had expired a week later – after the new pandemic restrictions for the next six months announced by Boris Johnson on Tuesday and after the new Job Support Scheme announced by Rishi Sunak on Thursday – the pressure for it to be extended would have been overwhelming.
Instead, with promises of Christmas truces, exemptions for areas in lockdown and prioritisation of cases, we have lurched into a situation that ensures that lots of people definitely will lose their homes in the next few months.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: September 15, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, First Homes, Shared ownership, Social housing |
Originally published on September 15 as a column for Inside Housing.
In the wake of Boris Johnson, Brexit and Covid-19, where next for affordable housing?
The last month has revealed the outlines of a government route map that combines some of Theresa May’s commitments on social rent with an update of David Cameron’s vision for home ownership and adds a big dose of planning reform to housebuilding targets.
On the plus side, housing secretary Robert Jenrick confirmed that the new Affordable Homes Programme will include homes for social rent, and more of them than in the previous one.
As expressed in a speech to the virtual Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) conference and an announcement last week, that is definitely more May than .
However, it still falls way short of the 90,000 social rent homes a year called for by the Conservative-controlled housing select committee in July or likely demand from 1.6 million households revealed in research for the National Housing Federation on Tuesday.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: September 7, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Construction industry, Fire safety, Leasehold |
Originally published on September 7 as a column for Inside Housing.
All through the cladding saga, the government has dragged its feet and resisted spending money before finally being forced to act.
Think back to the way ministers resisted any kind of fund for replacement of Grenfell-style ACM cladding, then insisted private building owners should pay, then denied the need for any help for non-ACM cladding and you see a pattern repeating itself.
It took the government almost a year after Grenfell to announce a £400m fund for the removal of ACM on social housing blocks, almost two years to find £200m for private blocks and almost three years to announce the £1bn Building Safety Fund for the removal of non-ACM cladding.
All this while the cladding scandal continued to escalate, dragging in more and more blocks and more and more residents and eventually wrecking the whole market in recently built flats.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 25, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Legal, Private renting, Social housing |
Originally written on August 24 as a column for Inside Housing.
The u-turn was not as dramatic as the one over exam results and it means Robert Jenrick will not for now be joining Gavin Williamson in detention after the politics class.
But, now that it’s happened, does the 11th-hour climbdown over the Coronavirus evictions ban foreshadow a more permanent improvement renters’ rights after the pandemic?
The package announced on Friday following consultation with the judiciary extends the ban by four weeks from August 23 to September 20 in England and Wales. It also extends the notice period for tenants in England from three to six months in all cases except those involving anti-social behaviour and domestic abuse.
This is the second extension to the ban announced at the 11th hour, as it was originally only meant to last until June, then extended to August.
You still have to wonder what took so long: the Welsh Government introduced a six-month notice period under its devolved housing powers a month ago but is reliant on decisions in Westminster about the evictions ban because judicial affairs are not devolved.
It has also announced low-interest loans for tenants in arrears worth £8 million (the equivalent of £140 million in England given its far larger population) and maxed out discretionary housing payments but is still facing pressure to go further.
At least England got there in the end, though. The question now, given that four weeks is not very long, is what comes next?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 20, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Coronavirus, Private renting, Social housing |
Originally published on insidehousing.co.uk on August 24 – before the extension of the evictions ban the following day. Post on that to come.
Just like with Coronavirus and the A levels fiasco, ministers cannot say they have not been warned.
As the clock counts down to the restart of evictions, they can turn a deaf ear to claims from Shelter, Citizens Advice and Generation Rent, the shadow housing secretary and now a range of public health organisations about the wave of evictions and homelessness that is about to hit them.
They can turn a blind eye to the action taken by their counterparts in Scotland, Wales and now Northern Ireland to get ahead of the situation and deliver more help for renters.
And they can choose to ignore what’s already happening in parts of the United States, where some cities have turned convention centres into huge court annexes to cope with the surge of cases there.
As I write this on Thursday morning, nothing, including a last-minute u-turn, can be ruled out with this government, but as it stands things will return to insecure normality for renters from the start of next week.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 7, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Benefit cap, Coronavirus, Local housing allowance |
Originally published as a column for Inside Housing on August 7.
Step away from planning reform for a few moments and grim news out today (Thursday August 6) reveals a more immediate crisis in the benefits system with even more alarming implications for the future.
Figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show that the number of households subject to the benefit cap almost doubled to 154,000 between February 2020 and May 2020. Of those, 140,000 had children.
More households have moved on to Universal Credit over time so the grey line for total capped households is the one to watch – note that the increase is much bigger than when the benefit cap was reduced in 2016.
Read the rest of this entry »
