Posted: June 30, 2026 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Council housing, Homelessness, Local housing allowance, Social housing, Temporary accommodation |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
‘Everything starts with a good home and this country finally has to put that at the top of its priority list.’
Housing has rarely been as central to the vision of a prospective prime minister as it was in the speech by Andy Burnham on Monday.
The speech was billed in advance as being all about devolution and how the success of the model inherited and further developed by Mr Burnham as mayor of Greater Manchester can be spread across the country.
And there was plenty of that as he promised ‘the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen’ driven by a new No10 North based in Manchester.
But what really struck me was how fundamental housing is to that wider vision: ‘If you don’t give people a good home then what chance of having a good life?’ was his rhetorical question.
The new MP for Makerfield has often taken positions on things like public control of essential services, council housing, high private rents and Local Housing Allowance that are to the left of the current government.
The question is whether those policies would really be priorities for Mr Burnham as a prime minister with a million and one other things to think about: not just devolution but the NHS, defence, education, immigration that usually dominate the political agenda.
For all his emphasis on devolution and building things from below, powerful backing from the top will be required to deliver change in housing against entrenched interests elsewhere in government.
Mr Burnham’s ‘10-year mission to raise people’s living standards’ sounds similar to Keir Starmer’s Plan for Change and ‘decade of national renewal’ at first glance.
But where the current prime minister’s missions had little to say about housing, his successor puts homes front and centre in what he’s saying about ‘greater public control of essential services like water, housing, energy and transport’.
In this story the loss of 1.5 million council homes since the 1980s has led directly to a ‘housing trap’ in which the benefits system chases higher private rents, governments try to control costs via freezes in Local Housing Allowance and the costs fall on local councils paying for temporary accommodation with a ‘ruinous’ impact on the public finances.
The answer, says Mr Burnham, is ‘the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period’.
He’s said this many times before as mayor while begging questions that have still not been answered.
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Posted: June 22, 2026 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Never mind 1.5 million new homes in England during this parliament. The emerging question is whether the government can deliver 1 million.
The chances of hitting the target were between slim and zero even at the point that it was made a manifesto commitment.
Estimates from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) indicate that delivery was already slowing before the economic fall-out from the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz made the prospects for housebuilding look even grimmer.
Between the start of the Labour government on July 9 2024 and June 14 this year delivery is estimated at 392,400 net additional homes.
Far from the 300,000 needed every year of this parliament the number of additional new homes fell below 200,000 in 2025/26.
Delivery of under 400,000 in almost two years means 1.1 million will be required over the rest of this parliament to hit the target: 367,000 a year.
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Posted: June 11, 2026 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Home ownership, Stamp duty, Tax |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Sooner or later a government will have to grasp the nettle of reforming the way that housing is taxed.
Sooner is the implication of Andy Burnham’s still semi-declared campaign to be Labour leader and prime minister, with the would-be MP for Makerfield keen to reform ‘regressive council tax’ and saying that he believes that land is ‘under-taxed’.
Soon, says the all-party Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Committee, in a report this week calling for reform of stamp duty land tax to improve affordability and a review of other property taxes.
Later has been the answer from all previous governments as they look at the implications of reforming stamp duty, council tax and inheritance tax and see a political minefield ahead of them.
But it’s had to imagine a long-term housing strategy that does not include reform of property taxes, which may be one big reason why the timetable for the one expected from this government has slipped so much.
First promised ‘in the coming months’ in July 2024, the strategy has been scheduled for ‘the new year’, ‘the spring’ and then ‘later this year’ in 2025, then ‘in the spring of 2026’. The current position, almost two years into the Labour government, is that it will be published ‘in due course’.
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Jules Birch 