Posted: May 6, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Coronavirus, Permitted development, Regeneration |
Originally published as a column for Inside Housing on May 4.
How will Coronavirus change how we live and work – and how will that change housing?
In one sense these are impossible questions to answer since so much depends on how quickly we find a vaccine or an effective treatment for Covid-19 and how deep the recession will become.
Find either quickly and politics and the economy could soon return to something close to what we knew before February. After all, it seemed obvious that nobody would want to live or work in tall buildings after September 2001 and that house prices would fall after 2008.
If the search takes longer, if there is a second or third wave, if another Coronavirus hits us, the effects could be far more profound as social distancing and self-isolation change how we think about how we should live.
But in between those two scenarios many of the effects of the crisis will linger and a series of more marginal changes may add up to something bigger.
After months in which our homes have become the centre of our lives, not just places to eat and sleep but places to work and stay safe, the effects on housing could be just as profound.
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Posted: March 31, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Social housing | Tags: UK Housing Review |
Originally posted on March 31 as a blog for Inside Housing.
Some time in the long distant past (two weeks ago) we were just emerging from a Budget that signalled better times ahead for affordable housing but left a string of unanswered questions ahead of the Spending Review in the Autumn.
Nest week should have seen the launch of the UK Housing Review 2020 but it appears virtually instead this week in our newly shrunken world as a powerful reminder that other things once mattered.
As ever, it combines a wealth of authoritative statistics about housing with in-depth analysis of all tenures as well as finance, the economy, homelessness, help with housing costs and international comparisons.
What really struck me me is the picture that emerges of the state of our affordable housing and the stark contrast between England and the other UK nations that has developed over the last ten years. This is not new of course but seeing it all brought together is what really hits home.
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Posted: March 17, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Permitted development, Planning, Shared ownership, Social housing | Tags: Robert Jenrick |
Originally posted on March 17 on my blog for Inside Housing.
What was billed as a statement about planning to follow the Budget was actually a declaration of intent about the future of housing – with some glaring contradictions at the heart of it.
An oral statement to the Commons and accompanying policy paper last Thursday from housing secretary Robert Jenrick foreshadow not just the planning and social housing white papers but also a new housing strategy that will be published alongside the Spending Review in the Autumn.
By my reckoning this will be the first housing strategy to be billed as such since David Cameron ‘radical and unashamedly ambitious’ one that pledged to ‘get Britain building’ in 2011.
Given what’s happened since, and the fact that Thursday’s press release promises exactly the same thing, that begs a few questions about what exactly the government has been doing in the meantime.
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Posted: March 16, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Council housing, Fire safety, Local housing allowance |
Originally published on March 11 as a blog for Inside Housing.
This is a Budget that does not live up to its own hype and has some glaring omissions but still brings some good news for housing.
There are three big positives: a £12.2bn Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) over the five years from 2021/22; an additional £1bn for a Building Safety Fund to remove dangerous cladding; and £650m to help rough sleepers into permanent accommodation.
Add the reversal of an interest rate hike for borrowing for new council homes, extra funding for housing infrastructure, £1.2bn in consequentials that other UK nations can invest in new homes and an extension of Shared Accommodation Rate exemptions to young rough sleepers and other vulnerable groups, and this looks like one of the best Budgets for housing in the last 10 years.
However, that’s not setting the bar especially high, and you don’t have to look very far below the surface before the questions start to mount up.
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Posted: January 15, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Council housing, Fire safety, Home ownership, Land, Leasehold, Permitted development, Right to buy |
Originally published on January 15 as a blog for Inside Housing.
Robert Jenrick and Esther McVey faced their first parliamentary questions as housing secretary and housing minister on Monday – almost six months after they took up their posts.
The reasons for the remarkable delay to their despatch box debuts – the summer recess, Brexit and the December election – are not hard to guess and are also why housing has slipped down the political agenda in the meantime.
But, give or take the odd appearance in parliamentary debates and in front of select committees, the delay also means that we still have only a fuzzy picture of what they really think about the key issues stacking up in their in-trays.
And it came in the wake of a report in the Daily Mail over the weekend about an apparent clash between the two over where the government should spend its housing cash and which voters they should be targeting.
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Posted: January 10, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Devolution, Fire safety, Grenfell Tower, Home ownership, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Housing associations, Housing benefit, Private renting, Social housing, Tenants, Tenure change |
Originally published in Inside Housing on January 10.
It was a decade of four elections, four prime ministers and three referenda. It began in the midst of a Global Financial Crisis and ended with the political crisis of Brexit. It was scarred by the disaster at Grenfell Tower.
All but 15 of the 520 weeks in the 2010s had a Conservative prime minister but four different governments brought four different approaches. David Cameron was all about cuts in coalition followed by radical (but mostly failed) marketising reforms once he had elbowed Nick Clegg aside. Theresa May brought a profound change in rhetoric and some significant changes of substance. Boris Johnson shifted the emphasis back to home ownership.
Here is the decade summed up in 10 headings: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 5, 2019 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Decarbonisation, Fire safety, Social housing, Uncategorized | Tags: Election 2019 |
Originally published on December 5 on my blog for Inside Housing.
The most illuminating answer in Wednesday night’s housing hustings came with the final question.
Politicians at the event organised by a coalition of different housing organisations were asked: ‘How much of your income do you think it’s reasonable and right to spend on housing?’
They were asked for a quickfire answer to an affordability question that covers lots of complicated issues. What counts as income and what as housing costs? Do you include housing benefit? Do you account for differences in incomes and tenures?
The standard answer is a maximum of a third – and that was the one given by John Healey for Labour, Sian Berry for the Greens and Tom Brake (who said 30%) for the Lib Dems.
But Luke Hall, junior housing minister in the last Conservative government, went first and went out on a limb with 50%.
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