Autumn Statement brings good news (for now) on LHA
Posted: November 23, 2023 Filed under: Affordable housing, Local housing allowance, Permitted development, Temporary accommodation | Tags: Autumn Statement Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
The good news in Jeremy Hunt’s speech is that the government has finally listened to all the arguments about soaring rents, evictions and homelessness and Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates will be linked to private rents again from next April.
The bad news buried in the background documents to his Autumn Statement is that rates will be frozen again for the four years after that, recreating the shortfalls between housing benefit and rents for tenants and generating all the costs of homelessness that led to the lifting of the freeze in the first place.
It’s not much of a way to run a benefits system or a housing system but it is entirely in keeping with an Autumn Statement characterised by even more smoke and mirrors than a usual Budget.
That’s amply demonstrated by the most headline-grabbing measure: the cut in National Insurance will not actually mean a tax cut for households hit by a continued freeze in the thresholds for income tax, although it does at least benefit workers (who pay NI and income tax) rather than landlords and shareholders (who only pay income tax).
And the cuts in NI and business tax are made possible in the first place by more sleight of hand: as the accompanying report from the Office for Budget Responsibility reveals, they only add up thanks to unfeasibly large cuts in public services and a freeze (aka significant real terms cut) in capital spending after the next election.
Needless to say that leaves next to no room for investment in new social homes or the decarbonisation of the existing stock even though the real value of both continues to be squeezed by inflation.
Instead, beneath the surface of the statement, there are signs of a desperate search for policies that are not affected by the squeeze on public spending.
Read the rest of this entry »A reshuffle that beggars belief
Posted: November 14, 2023 Filed under: Leasehold, Private renting | Tags: DLUHC, Rachel Maclean Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
I’m not sure what Karl Marx would have made of the sixth housing minister in two years and the 16th in 13 years but it seems safe to say he would have run out of comparisons long ago.
The sacking of Rachel Maclean on Monday beggars belief not so much in itself – after nine months she was a relative veteran in the role – but in its timing.
Because the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has not just one but two important pieces of legislation on its immediate agenda.
As she tweeted herself, she was due to start piloting the first of these, the Renters (Reform) Bill, through its committee stage in the House of Commons today (Tuesday).
The Bill delivers on the 2019 Conservative manifesto pledge of scrapping Section 21 and represents a delicate balancing act between the interests of landlords and tenants.
You might have thought, then, that it would benefit from a minister who knows her brief and is sufficiently across the detail to debate it with the opposition, both on the Labour side and among her own backbenchers. You might – but not Rishi Sunak.
Read the rest of this entry »A King’s Speech fit for a government running out of time
Posted: November 7, 2023 Filed under: Energy efficiency, Housebuilding, Leasehold, Private renting, Rough sleeping Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
The good news is that the King’s Speech does promise a Leasehold and Freehold Bill. The less good is that this is not yet the end, and maybe not the beginning of the end either, for the tenure that Michael Gove described as ‘indefensible in the 21st century’.
As first reported by the Sunday Times last month, leasehold reform will be part of the legislative programme for the next parliamentary session, confounding fears that it would be left in the pending tray until the next election.
But it will still be a race against time to get a complex piece of legislation through parliament in little over a year and its most far-reaching proposal is only a consultation for now.
The other major housing measure in the speech is confirmation that the government will continue with the Renters (Reform) Bill and abolition of Section 21 after introducing them in the last session.
There was no mention in the speech or the background documents of criminalising tents, despite home secretary Suella Braverman’s controversial comments about rough sleeping being a ‘lifestyle choice’.
Something like it could yet appear in the Criminal Justice Bill as the government looks to replace the Vagrancy Act but for the moment it looks as though the leak over the weekend was designed to kill the idea.
More surprisingly, neither the speech nor the background briefing document mention rules on nutrient neutrality that the government claims are blocking 100,000 new homes. An attempt to do this in the Levelling Up Act foundered in the House of Lords but ministers had vowed they would try again as soon as possible.
There is also a glaring contradiction between comments about the importance of energy efficiency in homes in the briefing on the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill and boasts about measures to support landlords by scrapping the requirement to bring their properties up to EPC C in the background to the Renters (Reform) Bill.
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Jules Birch 