Conference calls

Posted: October 4, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a comment

Another week, another party conference that seems longer on talk than action on the housing crisis. Like the Liberal Democrats in Brighton, the Labour party in Manchester made all the right noises. It even advocated many of the same policies – if you can call carefully crafted aspirations policies.

As I noted in my blog for Inside Housing on Monday, the headline commitment by Ed Balls to funding 100,000 affordable homes and a stamp duty holiday from the proceeds of the 4G mobile phone auction is not actually a policy commitment at all, just a call for the government to do something in the next two years. If Labour wins the 2015 election, George Osborne will have already spent the money (almost certainly on something else) and in the absence of another one-off windfall housing will have to take its place in the queue for the zero-based spending review planned by Balls. His speech this week is a promising signal that housing could be a priority but no more than that.

Read the rest of this entry »

Phoning home

Posted: October 1, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding | Leave a comment

It’s great to see Ed Balls putting his – or rather mobile phone companies’ – money where his mouth is on housing but his speech still begs some big questions.

It’s good news too see housing finally making the headlines at the start of a Labour party conference rather than becoming a footnote before they sing The Red Flag at the end.

Media briefing ahead of the speech by the shadow chancellor was all about housing and his call for the £3-4 billion proceeds of the sale of 4G mobile phone licenses to be spent on 100,000 affordable homes and a new stamp duty holiday for first-time buyers. The idea seemed to go down pretty well with delegates judging from the applause in the hall.

Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Third time lucky?

Posted: September 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding | Leave a comment

So here it is: what by my reckoning the coalition government’s third housing strategy in two and a half years.

Mark one was the assumption that implementing the coalition’s programme for government would do the trick. The ‘powerful new incentive’ of the new homes bonus would persuade local authorities to approve more homes and get housebuilding moving. The Localism Act would turn help turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs. And FirstBuy would give a time-limited kick-start to the housing market with equity loans for first-time buyers.

When that didn’t work, Mark two came last November. The big idea was NewBuy, a government-backed mortgage indemnity scheme to give 95 per cent mortgages on new homes to up to 100,000 buyers. That was backed up by funds for custom homes and empty homes, a consultation on right to buy 2 and another review of investment in the private rented sector.

Read the rest of this entry »

Give Montague a chance

Posted: August 24, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Private renting | Leave a comment

Here’s why I think the housing backlash against the Montague report is being overdone.

From some of the reactions so far, the review group seem to a bunch of pin-striped latter-day Rachmans intent on squeezing out affordable housing and trousering the profits in between slaughtering the first born and unleashing plague, pestilence and famine.

Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Broken record

Posted: August 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Social housing | Leave a comment

Even as the Olympics provide compelling evidence that Britain is not as broken as the government makes out, the anniversary of the riots is a reminder that it is not fixed either.

In the glow from the marvellous opening ceremony and the stellar performances of the athletes it’s easy to forget that we are a country in austerity and recession.  Perhaps that’s because we weren’t when we won the games and when the stadia and all the other facilities were funded.

The Olympics and the Paralympics that follow are like a holiday from the cuts, unemployment and welfare ‘reform’. The thousands of volunteers who are being hailed as a living embodiment of the Big Society are happily working for nothing for the common good rather than being made to work for nothing for private contractors. And the homes that will be built at the athletes village and on the Olympic park will be a lasting legacy of all that investment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Model theory

Posted: July 10, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housing benefit | Leave a comment

So is affordable rent value for money? After two hours of scrutiny from MPs we are still not much closer to an answer.

What seems clear is that between them the DCLG, HCA and housing sector have done a pretty good job of making the best of a grim situation up to 2015. What is far from clear is what that means over the next 10, 20 or 30 years.

The influential public accounts committee spent yesterday afternoon questioning experts from the sector plus Sir Bob Kerslake of the DCLG and Margaret Ritchie of the HCA. This follows publication of a report on the affordable rent programme by the National Audit Office that, as I blogged last week, left several key questions about the programme unanswered. By my reckoning I now have partial answers to two out of five questions, some more information on another two but an even more confused picture on the fifth.

Read the rest of this entry »

Final answer?

Posted: July 4, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housing benefit | Leave a comment

The verdict from the National Audit Office (NAO) on the affordable rent programme is generally positive but it still leaves several key questions unanswered.

The financial watchdog says that the DCLG has ‘so far achieved its policy objective to maximise the number of homes delivered within the available grant funding’. Grant per home was a third of previous levels, the programme was over-subscribed and 80,000 homes are being delivered against an initial target of 56,000.

The NAO concludes that:

‘The Department and the [Homes and Communities] Agency selected a design for the Programme that is projected to maximise benefits and the number of homes delivered within the constraints of the £1.8 billion capital funding available. The launch of the Programme has been successful. Providers have committed to building some 80,000 homes for the £1.8 billion of government investment, approximately 24,000 more homes than first expected. In this respect, the Programme has made a good start.’

So far, so good but the NAO also reveals several risks:

  • 18 per cent of contracts had not been signed as at April 2012 (mostly local authorities that needed to confirm their borrowing capacity following HRA reform)
  • more than half of the homes are planned for the final year of the programme ‘so slippage would put at risk achievement…of the planned 80,000 homes’
  • some providers in London are worried they will not be able to charge the rents they originally agreed
  • the DCLG needs to carry out ‘a thorough analysis of the financial position of providers to assess the repeatability’ of the programme after 2015.

In the process, the report reveals details about the programme that I at least have not seen before but it also begs some more questions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Out for the count

Posted: July 3, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Homelessness, Social housing | Leave a comment

It was seconds out, round 27 in the Commons yesterday in the housing stats war but where were the two main contenders?

Communities and local government questions has become a stats slugfest between Grant ‘Slasher’ Shapps in the blue trunks and Jack ‘Jabber’ Dromey in the red but yesterday as the theme music from Rocky began to play there were two new boxers in the spotlight. Given everything that’s been happening outside the ring – new and highly contentious stats on affordable housing and homelessness to argue about and an official complaint from Dromey to the referee – was I the only one in the crowd to feel let down?

Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Vanishing act

Posted: June 15, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Planning, Regeneration, Right to buy, Social housing | 2 Comments

One of the stats most often quoted by Grant Shapps is that the social rented housing stock shrank by 421,000 homes under Labour. The real question is how much it will shrink under him.

The housing minister quoted the figure again this week when he was interviewed on the Today programme on Wednesday about the affordable housing figures (for more on them see my blog for Inside Housing here). His use of statistics is much discussed but on this particular one he’s right: social housing disappeared under Labour as right to buy and demolitions outnumbered construction of new homes. What he did not mention was that roughly twice as many homes disappeared under the Conservatives between 1979 and 1997.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stats war

Posted: June 12, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Social housing | Leave a comment

Affordable rent may have kicked in at last but affordable housing starts are still down 57 per cent on a year ago. Get set for another row about stats.

It is of course pure coincidence but 24 hours after Jack Dromey and Labour went to the blankets in the housing stats war with Grant Shapps (well, ok, referred him to the UK Statistics Authority) perhaps the most politically sensitive of all figures were published this morning.

Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.

Newer Entries →