Posted: October 10, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: USA |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Housing has gained a rare salience in the US presidential election as Americans battle with rising rents and mortgage costs.
The contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is a chance for British observers to go through the looking glass of how housing is done across the Atlantic.
The emphasis on the ‘American dream’ of home ownership will be familiar and a broad alignment is discernible between the Democrats and Labour and the Republicans and Conservatives.
But this is also a very different world in which finance is dominated by tax credits and housing vouchers rather than grant and housing benefit. And it is also one in which race and immigration form a much clearer political dividing line.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: September 26, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Energy efficiency, Housebuilding, Social housing | Tags: Angela Rayner, Labour, Rachel Reeves |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
For the most part, this was a Labour conference of nudges and winks rather than major announcements.
That is no coincidence because major decisions across government are being left to the Budget and one-year spending review next month and the multi-year spending review to follow in the Spring.
So for all the debate at what looked like an unprecedented number of fringe meetings on housing in Liverpool, for all the promises from the conference podium of brownfield passports and help for homeless veterans and care leavers, there was comparatively little that signalled the direction the new government intends to take.
The one exception was not a surprise: the reinstatement by net zero secretary Ed Miliband of the 2030 target to bring all rented homes up to a minimum level of Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) C by 2030.
The announcement reinstates an earlier target for Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards that was scrapped by Rishi Sunak and extends it to social and private rented homes
That will have major implications given that the costs of retrofitting social housing alone far exceed Labour’s scaled-back plans for green grants and loans.
Without a boost, that could accelerate the sell-off of older private rented stock and encourage social landlords to consolidate theirs, at the same time as it focusses their attention even more on improving their existing homes rather than building new ones.
On new homes, the big question for me is the relationship between Labour’s target of 1.5 million new homes in this parliament and its manifesto promise on affordable and social housing.’
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: September 20, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning, Section 106, Social housing, Wales |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
The trouble with targets
Housing targets concentrate minds in government and drive delivery but they also come with trade-offs attached.
As Labour gears up for its first party conference since gaining power, much of the attention will be on announcements that fill in the blanks in how it is going to achieve its manifesto target of 1.5 million new homes in this parliament.
Superficially unambitious – it’s no more than the 2019 Tory manifesto promise 300,000 of 300,000 new homes by the mid-2020s – it is actually a huge stretch, with ministers expecting no more than 200,000 net additional dwellings in this financial year as a starting point.
That will leave a growing shortfall to be made up in the later years of the parliament and could require more like 400,000 new homes a year to be built by the late 2020s.
Having a target in place is important because it drives activity within government, especially when it is backed by the rise of Labour yimbyism.
But a target does not guarantee delivery in itself, even with the magic added ingredient of planning reform.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: September 11, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Fire safety, Grenfell Tower, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
A week after the final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry it’s time to focus on the responses so far and what happens next.
Sir Keir Starmer made a dignified statement in the Commons in which he spoke directly to the Grenfell community: ‘I want to start with an apology on behalf of the British state to each and every one of you, and indeed to all the families affected by this tragedy. It should never have happened. The country failed to discharge its most fundamental duty to protect you and your loved ones—the people we are here to serve—and I am deeply sorry.’
We’ve heard prime ministers say things like this many times over the decades, sometimes after disasters, sometimes after scandals. The difference is that Grenfell was both.
For Grenfell United, publication of the report is ‘a significant chapter in the journey to truth, justice and change. But justice has not been delivered. The inquiry report reveals that whenever there’s a clash between corporate interest and public safety, governments have done everything they can to avoid their responsibilities to keep people safe. The system isn’t broken, it was built this way.’
All disasters have an element of scandal about them too. There were basic operational failures that led to them, often compounded by a cavalier attitude to health and safety and establishment resistance to justice for the victims.
Similarly, scandals like the Post Office and infected blood were systemic failures but also disasters that cost victims their livelihoods and their lives.
Grenfell combines the two: not an accident but an entirely preventable disaster; and a scandal that does not just implicate local and central government and the entire construction industry but also raises fundamental questions about societal attitudes towards social housing and the safety of most of the blocks of flats built during this century.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 26, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Fire safety |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
If anyone needed a reminder, Monday morning’s major fire at an apartment block in Dagenham can only increase the urgency of finding a solution to the building safety crisis.
Thankfully all residents are accounted for following a significant search and rescue operation but the pictures of the flames engulfing the building and the stories of residents fleeing their homes were only too familiar.
Coming nine days before publication of the final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry, it will have revived some awful memories for the bereaved, survivors and families even as it underlines the scale of the wider crisis that the report will not directly address.
And it will add to pressure on the government for more action, both to hold those responsible to account and to accelerate the pace of remediation work to make other buildings safe.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 18, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Uncategorized |
What did it for you? The Musk takeover? 240 characters. The ‘For You’ tab? The re-platforming of fascists? The ‘interview’ with Trump?
For me it was all of the above plus a more general disengagement with what used to be Twitter. Whatever the trigger, more and more people have had enough of X and a tipping point appears to have been reached this week.
For a freelance journalist and news junkie like me, it’s been a wrench. I first joined in 2008 and Twitter became both a platform that amplified my work and a source of stories and insight. For a while there was a real sense of community and meeting people in person that you only knew from Twitter became a thing.
All that was over a long time ago as the rancour and the pile-ons took over. As I noticed engagement slipping I became less inclined to tweet myself and more and more only used the app to keep up with the news.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 13, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Council housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
This month marks the centenary of one of the most important pieces of legislation in housing history.
The Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1924 – better known as the Wheatley Act – was introduced by the UK’s first-ever Labour government, a minority administration headed by Ramsay MacDonald that only lasted for 10 months.
A century later, with Keir Starmer only the fourth Labour prime minister to win an overall majority, are there lessons to be learned?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 1, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, New towns, Planning, Right to buy, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing
The last day of term is traditionally a time when nothing much happens and we get set for the holidays to come.
Not so much for Angela Rayner. The deputy prime minister marked the last day in parliament before the summer recess this week with a flurry of announcements, guidance and consultation.
Most of these – planning reforms including a new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), a new towns taskforce, changes to the right to buy – were foreshadowed in the election campaign and early days of the new government.
However, both her written statement and what she outlined to MPs including some intriguing hints of changes that go well beyond supply and planning.
And there was also an important piece of context: Rayner said the government now expects to deliver just 200,000 new homes in England in this financial year. That is 100,000 fewer than the annual average needed to meet its target of 1.5 million and will ramp up the pressure in the later years of this parliament.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: July 18, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Leasehold, Legal, Planning, Private renting, Section 21, Social housing, Temporary accommodation |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Amid the excitement of the first Labour King’s Speech in 15 years, it may seem churlish to inject a note of scepticism.
The excitement lies in the prospect of planning reform to deliver more homes, the potential of more devolution in England, the promise of improved rights for private renters and the hope that we could at long last see the abolition of leasehold.
Nobody should under-estimate the potential of this programme to improve the lives of millions of private renters and leaseholders or the determination of the government to use its mandate to deliver more new homes.
Yes, we already knew all of this from Labour’s manifesto but hearing them in the King’s words amid the pomp and ceremony of the state opening of parliament begins their transition from promises on a page to action in the real world.
The scepticism comes from two directions. First, and most obviously, the closer we get to implementation of these reforms the more the details matter.
The background document has some of these but more will follow once the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, English Devolution Bill, Renters’ Rights Bill and Draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill make their way through parliament over the next few months.
The second reason for scepticism is the hype that comes with it. ‘Take this paragraph from the prime minster’s introduction to the King’s Speech: ‘Too many people currently live with the threat of insecurity and injustice, and so we will make sure everyone can grow up in the secure housing they deserve. We will introduce tough new protections for renters, end no fault evictions and raise standards to make sure homes are safe for people to live in.’
The second sentence describes what the government will do for private renters. These are good but they do not come close to meeting the aspiration in the first.
A dose of high-flown rhetoric is perfectly understandable but Keir Starmer also made a point of stressing ‘patient work and serious solutions, rather than the temptation of the easy answer’.
So how does the King’s Speech measure up to that?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: July 8, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning | Tags: Election 2024 |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
It’s all change for housing at Westminster after a stunning election victory for Labour. More than half of the MPs who will be sworn in this week are new to the Commons while decades of experience on the green benches were swept away in the Conservatives’ worst defeat of the modern era.
Just about the only continuity so far came with confirmation that Angela Rayner will step across from her shadow role to become the new deputy prime minister and secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities and minister of state while former shadow housing minister Matthew Pennycook will be one of her ministers of state.
That promises well with a busy agenda to come. Despite the implication that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) will keep the title it was given under Boris Johnson, there is speculation that a new name is imminent.
James Riding has already introduced many of the new MPs on the Labour side, while the Labour Housing Group focussed on eight of them on Red Brick ahead of the election, but it’s worth highlighting some of the results that have extra resonance:
Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield): There are two big reasons to start here. First, because Lewin worked for Clarion for seven years, most recently as director of communications, second because of who he beat. Grant Shapps was the first and longest-serving housing minister since 2010 and associated with many of the most contentious changes under the coalition. He was the minister responsible for ending top-down housebuilding targets and the creation of the New Homes Bonus and was also a supporter of ending lifetime tenancies and defender of what he called the removal of the spare room subsidy.
Dan Tomlinson (Chipping Barnet): Another double reason for celebration. First, the defeated Tory incumbent was Theresa Villiers, one of the leaders of the backbench rebellion that led to the Conservative retreat on housebuilding and planning that will now be reversed under Labour. Second, Tomlinson is an economist who has worked at the Treasury and most recently the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, so should be well placed to advocate for anti-poverty and pro-housing policies. He grew up on free school meals and was homeless for a time as a child.
Sarah Sackman (Finchley and Golders Green): Taking Margaret Thatcher’s old seat of Finchley and Golders Green was a symbolic victory for Labour and winning in a constituency with a large Jewish population is seen as a vindication of Keir Starmer’s firm line on anti-semitism. A barrister specialising in planning and environmental law, expertise that could be very useful for this government, Sackman has acted for local authorities and charities such as Shelter. She also acted for residents in a case that saw a High Court judge quash planning permission for Curo no demolish and rebuild large parts of the Foxhill Estate in Bath.
Danny Beales, Uxbridge and South Ruislip: Taking Boris Johnson’s old seat after losing in the by-election last year was another symbolic result for Labour. Beales experienced homelessness, temporary accommodation and life in bed and breakfast as a child and was previously cabinet member for new homes, jobs and communities at Camden Council.
Read the rest of this entry »
Jules Birch 