Cracking the code on Section 106
Posted: October 17, 2025 Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Section 106 Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
For something so important, the Section 106 system of providing affordable homes seems to exist inside a black box.
We know what goes in (developments all over the country, local councils trying to get the contributions they can) and we know what comes out (almost half of affordable homes delivered for year).
We also know that this is just part of a wider system for capturing land value not just for affordable homes but also community infrastructure and facilities.
But the inner workings of the system seem hidden.
This is most obviously true when it comes to the dark arts of viability assessments that allow experienced developers to run rings around under-resourced local authority planning departments.
But it can also be true in reverse, with the complexity of the system holding development back and sparking calls for reform.
Read the rest of this entry »What’s at stake in the spending review?
Posted: June 3, 2025 Filed under: Affordable housing, Decarbonisation, Help to Buy, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Rents | Tags: spending review Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
With a week to go until the most consequential spending review for ten years, the Treasury is facing desperate last-ditch lobbying from departments that have yet to agree their settlement.
Last week’s public intervention by chief constables warning that the government will fail to meet its pledges on crime unless they get more cash is sign enough of that.
So too the leaked memo from deputy prime minister Angela Rayner setting out options for higher taxes that was inevitably followed by more leaks about her spending priorities.
As of this week, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) was said to be one of the departments yet to agree a settlement, alongside the Home Office, with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero just finalising one..
By contrast with previous spending reviews, housing starts with the advantage of having a politically powerful secretary of state in charge – and Angela Rayner has repeatedly promised ‘the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation’.
But the ‘biggest boost’ can mean many different things, some of them genuine, some of them not remotely up to the challenge of the moment.
Read the rest of this entry »Spring Statement glow could soon fade
Posted: March 27, 2025 Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Welfare reform | Tags: Spring Statement Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Just for a change, housing looks like one of the winners from the Spring Statement – but is everything quite what it seems?
On housebuilding overall, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) gave Rachel Reeves a big boost as it delivered a positive verdict on the planning reforms introduced by the government in the Autumn.
The chancellor boasted in her speech that measures such as the new National Planning Policy Framework, the release of ‘grey belt’ land and the restoration of mandatory housing targets would permanently boost GDP by 0.2 per cent by 2029/30 and 0.4 per cent within ten years.
She said: ‘That is the biggest positive growth impact that the OBR have ever reflected in their forecast, for a policy with no fiscal cost.’
Just as good for the chancellor was the watchdog’s forecast on housing numbers: ‘The OBR have concluded that our reforms will lead to housebuilding reaching a 40-year high of 305,000 a year by the end of the forecast period,’ she said. ‘And changes to the National Planning Policy Framework alone will help build over 1.3 million homes in the UK over the next five years, taking us within touching distance of delivering our manifesto promise to build 1.5 million homes in England in this parliament.’
The chancellor phrased that carefully but the Treasury press release was more gung-ho as it boasted that this would be ‘bringing the UK one step closer to its Plan for Change mission to build 1.5 million homes’.
That really would be good news, since almost nobody believes the target can be met, but read that paragraph again and you may spot a problem with it.
Read the rest of this entry »Promising signs on funding and new towns
Posted: February 19, 2025 Filed under: Affordable housing, New towns Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
After a relentless week of grim international news, it’s good to have something to celebrate on the domestic and housing front.
Until the spending review in the Spring, any assessment of the government’s overall approach to housing will have to be provisional but this week brought some hopeful signs.
First up was the announcement of an extra £300 million for the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP), plus for more temporary housing, then confirmation that this is in addition to the £500 million announced in the Budget in October.
At the time that seemed a little underwhelming given advance speculation that an extra £1 billion might be available but it now seems that some of that was held back.
True, the additional 7,800 affordable homes promised will only make up for a small part of the 50,000 to 70,000-home shortfall against what the 2021-26 AHP was originally expected to deliver, but that still represents a significant short-term boost for this year and lays down a marker for the future in the spending review.
It also recalls the last couple of years of the last Labour government, when regular announcements of extra investment added up to something more significant over time.
Next up, and more for the long term, is the announcement that more than 100 sites across England have been put forward as candidates for the next generation of new towns.
Read the rest of this entry »Labour’s cautious manifesto offers hints of real ‘change’
Posted: June 13, 2024 Filed under: Affordable housing, Fire safety, Housebuilding, Leasehold, Planning, Private renting Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Given a backdrop of grim economic times and successive election defeats, this was always going to be a cautious Labour manifesto.
So the good news is that housing features much more prominently than it did in the plans that the party has laid out in the last few months. It had only a walk on part in Labour’s five missions, six first steps and 10 ‘policies to change Britain’ –
The tone was set by one of the four speakers who introduced Keir Starmer. Daniel rents a one-bedroom flat in east London with his partner and two children and said he was backing Labour because of its plans to build more homes and support first-time buyers.
The manifesto itself contains few new policies and no new money but there are some interesting hints about what Labour might do in office.
The promise of 1.5 million new homes in the next parliament forms a key part of the section on kickstarting economic growth, with the party arguing that: ‘Britain is hampered by a planning regime that means we struggle to build either the infrastructure or housing the country needs.
And Labour directly challenges the Conservatives by arguing that ‘the dream of homeownership is now out of reach for too many young people’.
However, the manifesto does not mention the target of 70 per cent home ownership that Starmer set in his party conference speech only 18 months ago.
Read the rest of this entry »What does ‘good’ look like?
Posted: April 25, 2024 Filed under: Affordable housing Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
What should we be aiming for in housing policy? Read just about any government’s green or white paper published over the last 30 years and the answer will be something like ‘decent homes for everyone at a price they can afford’.
If that sounds straightforward, achieving it has proved to be anything but. For every lofty pronouncement like that made over the decades, the housing options available have become less decent, more insecure and more unaffordable.
So what should ‘good’ look like – and how can we get there? Homes for All, a report out this week from the Church of England and Nationwide Foundation sets out to provide some of the answers.
Most of these are not rocket science. The objectives of building more homes, especially more for social rent, making existing homes more energy efficient, increasing the options available for an ageing population and reducing homelessness to a bare minimum would appear in most of our lists of desired outcomes.
But considering them all together as part of one housing system throws up some hard choices that are too often ducked by policy makers.
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Jules Birch 