Housing by numbers

Posted: July 12, 2023 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Social housing | Tags: Rachel Maclean |Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

Achievements may be thin on the ground but, six months into her job as housing and planning minister, Rachel Maclean does at least seem to have grasped one of the fundamentals of the role.

The manipulation of numbers by ministers is part of a proud tradition that dates back years but makes me remember fondly the days when Grant Shapps would routinely obfuscate between ‘social’ and ‘affordable’ housing and Iain Duncan Smith would use ‘statrickstics’ to back up his bogus claims about welfare cuts.

In her speech to Housing 2023 earlier this month, Maclean harked back to the glory days of the social/affordable shuffle with a claim that ‘we’ve got record numbers of social rent homes that have been built’.

Asked by Inside Housing how she squared that with the fall in social rent completions from almost 39,562 a year in 2010 to 7,644 last year, she went full Nelson to claim ‘that’s not a figure I recognise’. And she doubled down to boast that ‘we’ve delivered more social rented homes than under the last Labour government’. The actual number is, of course, less than half – and most of them were funded by the investment programme the coalition inherited from Labour.

At Levelling Up questions on Monday, the minister was at it again. Asked by Labour MP Toby Perkins about affordable housing in his Chesterfield constituency and the 80 per cent fall in new social homes under the Conservatives nationally, she trumpeted the £11.5 billion Affordable Homes Programme and pinned the blame on the local council.

Ms Mclean was noticeably less keen on another comparison pushed by SNP MP Peter Grant, who said that Scotland had built new council and social rent homes at nine times the rate seen in England since 2007. Asked whether the English would be in less of a mess if they had followed the Scottish example, she responded with a curt ‘no’. 

The minister was also pressed on the government’s record on housebuilding in general. She admirably, if dubiously, held the line against claims that the government’s surrender to backbench Tory MPs on planning has wrecked its ambitions on housing, including its manifesto target of 300,000 new homes.

Levelling Up Committee chair Clive Betts asked her about new figures showing that housing starts were down 12 per cent in the first three months of the year:

‘That is down to a figure of just more than 37,000 starts, which is half the figure needed to hit 300,000 homes a year. On that basis, does she conclude like me that not merely is her policy not succeeding in hitting the housing targets, but it is considerably contributing to their failure?’

While deferring to his ‘considerable knowledge’, she hit back that ‘I will take no lectures from him and the Labour party on house building. This Government delivered 242,000 houses in 2019-20—that is the highest level for more than 30 years, including the entire time that the Labour party was in government.’

This is an accurate overall figure even if it has fallen back since but it refers to net additional dwellings, not houses, and the statistics for comparison only date back to the mid-2000s.

On that basis, the Labour peak in 2006/07 was indeed lower at 223,000 but most of the gap is due to there being fewer demolitions now. It also required the state to take an equity stake in hundreds of thousands of new build homes via Help to Buy.

Looking at the narrower statistics on housing completions alone, the 12 years between 2011 and 2022 (counting 2010 as a ‘Labour’ year) saw 1.75 million new homes built, a barely perceptible change on the 1.72 million completed between 1999 and 2010.

Both these numbers are well down on 1987 to 1998 (1.9 million), 1975 to 1986 (2.5 million) and 1963 to 1974 (3.6 million) and we all know the main reason why.

Given the state of the housing and mortgage markets, and the knock-on effects on development for sale, 2019/20 will remain the peak for some time to come.

However, away from the statistical spats, there were some interesting hints at Levelling Up Questions that ministers have not entirely given up on new housing.

Shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy asked directly about the impact of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill in blocking new homes and drew a ‘which clause?’ response from housing secretary Michael Gove even though Ms Maclean was answering the question.

Ms Nandy also raised a report over the weekend that Mr Gove is drawing up plans to turn Cambridge into ‘Britain’s silicon valley’ with 250,000 new homes.

The Cambridge 2040 ‘concept’ certainly does not lack ambition but it is hard not to be sceptical about the government’s ability to impose in one locality what it has been blocked from doing by Tory backbenchers elsewhere.

Half of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, long trumpeted by ministers, appears to have been lopped off and one local Tory MP says the rest ‘will not happen’.

It’s hard not be reminded of eco towns, the initiative by Gordon Brown that showed the last Labour government was at last thinking on a big enough scale on new homes but barely made it off the drawing board.

The rest of the Sunday Times report was interesting and trailed an upcoming speech by Mr Gove and policy announcements including a new National Planning Policy Framework, the return of 1980s-style development corporations and a national planning taskforce to help local authorities with large applications.

In the wake of the surrender to Tory backbenchers, these are signs that the housing policy pendulum may be starting to swing back to more national direction to meet housing need.

But no sooner had that sunk in than The Guardian was reporting a Freedom of Information request that confirms that Mr Gove’s department has handed back £1.9 billion in underspends to the Treasury, including £255 million for affordable housing and £245 million for building safety.

The underspend issue was first reported in the Financial Times in March and was confirmed in figures I found buried in the Budget Red Book later the same month.

It seems it’s just statistics that cannot be taken at value. Housing crisis – what housing crisis?

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