Posted: September 8, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Home ownership, Housebuilding, Social housing | Tags: Angela Rayner, Steve Reed |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Angela Rayner is a huge loss for the Labour government and the country but arguably an even bigger loss for housing.
The housing secretary had to go after the standards advisor ruled that she breached the ministerial code by underpaying the stamp duty on her new flat, even if the breach seems inadvertent and minor by comparison with previous tax errors by ministers.
Keir Starmer has lost someone who, after a difficult start, became a key partner on the left of the Labour Party as deputy leader and deputy prime minister.
Much like John Prescott in the early days of the Tony Blair government, her presence reassured Labour supporters that despite its modernising rhetoric the government had the interests of working people at heart.
Housing has lost a powerful voice at the top of government, someone who was in charge long enough to secure a favourable settlement in the spending review (even if it did not quite live up to her hype).
Would MHCLG have achieved as much without her? Housing might still have been a relative priority but probably not, I’d say.
Supporters of social and council housing – and those who need it – have lost an ally who knew its value from her own experience.
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Posted: July 4, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Fire safety, Homelessness, Leasehold, Planning, Private renting, Social housing, Welfare reform |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
A year into the Labour government how should we assess its record on housing?
It’s not hard to find reasons to celebrate, from the spending review announcement of £39 billion for the Affordable Homes Programme to the creation of a National Housing Bank within Homes England armed with an extra £16 billion in financial transactions capital.
Social rent is the priority after years when it was under threat of extinction and will account for 60 per cent of the renamed Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP).
Social landlords have got what they asked for on rents and the long-term plan for social and affordable housing sets out how they must improve their existing homes, professionalise their staff and give tenants more access to information.
The prospect of new financial flexibilities for local authorities and restrictions on the Right to Buy offer council housing its best opportunity in years to escape the straitjacket imposed by central government.
But there are still many gaps to be filled when Labour sets out its wider plans in a long-term housing strategy and publishes its homelessness strategy.
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Posted: May 1, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Home ownership, Inequality, Social housing, Tax |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Housing seems such a natural engine of inequality that it’s easy to forget that the opposite was once true.
For most of the 20th century housing was the force that made society more equal. Council housing and rent control improved standards, made homes more affordable and tackled exploitation of tenants by private landlords.
Owner-occupation expanded -perhaps 10 per cent of the population owned their own home in 1914 but that proportion expanded to a third by 1939, half by the start of the 1970s and two-thirds by the mid-1980s – while the proportion of homes rented from a private landlords fell from almost 90 per cent in 1918 to less than 10 per cent by the early 1990s.
And then things went into reverse. A fascinating chapter by Susan Smith in this year’s UK Housing Review explores how this happened and what can be done about it.
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Posted: March 6, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Commonhold, Leasehold |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
England and Wales have a long history of trying and failing to introduce commonhold and an even longer one of trying and failing to reform leasehold.
So this week’s white paper is a big moment, coming 60 years after Labour first pledged commonhold and 23 years after it botched its implementation.
After decades of frustration and failed attempts at reform, leaseholders will have to be patient for a little bit longer and take the housing minister at his word that this is ‘the beginning of the end for leasehold’.
While some have criticised Labour for going too slowly, the white paper highlights the flaws in previous legislation and the importance of getting things right.
So there will be both a draft Bill setting out how the existing commonhold framework will be amended and a further consultation on banning leasehold for new-build flats before all the pieces can be put into place.
Commonhold was first introduced in England and Wales in 2002 to bring them into line with what has been the default for at least 50 years in much of the rest of the developed world.
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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?
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Posted: June 20, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Home ownership, Housebuilding, New towns, Planning, Private renting, Right to buy |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
The focus of the election finally turned to housing today (Thursday) but blink and you may have missed it.
The issue described as ‘the dog that hasn’t barked’ by Nick Ferrari on LBC was briefly across the airwaves with housing secretary Michael Gove leading for the Conservatives and shadow housing minister Matthew Pennycook representing Labour in the wake of plans for renter reform launched overnight.
However, an anonymous quote in Politico Playbook did cause some howling, with a Labour official supposedly saying that ‘I don’t care if we flatten the whole green belt, we just need more houses in this country’.
Rishi Sunak took time off from preparing for tonight’s Question Time to tweet that it was ‘good to finally get Labour’s real views on Britain’s green belt’ while Keir Starmer flatly denied the whole thing on a visit to a housing development on the edge of York. ‘No, that wasn’t Labour party officials,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t Labour party policy.’
So what did we learn from election housing day? I dipped into the morning media round in a bid to find out.
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Posted: June 13, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Fire safety, Housebuilding, Leasehold, Planning, Private renting |
Originally 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.
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Posted: June 11, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Fire safety, Help to Buy, Home ownership, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Leasehold, Stamp duty | Tags: Conservatives |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing
Wounded by the D Day furore and badly behind in the polls, the Conservatives have retreated to their home ownership comfort zone in their election manifesto.
Rishi Sunak replayed their greatest hits in a Telegraph op-ed overnight and boasted in his speech at the launch that: ‘From Macmillan to Thatcher to today, it is we Conservatives who are the party of the property-owning democracy in this country.’
But he is well aware that the old tunes will be not be enough to fix the multiple housing crises that have developed over the last 14 years. Especially as his government has fallen badly short of the promises it made at the last election in 2019.
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Posted: May 27, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Fire safety, Leasehold, Planning, Private renting, Social housing | Tags: Michael Gove |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Following his surprise decision to stand down as MP, Michael Gove leaves Westminster as probably the most important politician for housing in the last 14 years of Conservative rule.
As housing secretary since September 2021 (with a brief break for Liz Truss) he was in charge for some of the most consequential legislation of the whole period: the Building Safety Act 2022; Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023; and Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024.
He also changed the terms of the debate on many issues, issuing public calls for more social housing in a way that would have been unthinkable for earlier Conservative ministers and speaking up for the rights of leaseholders, renters and tenants.
Yet for all that he remains something of an enigma. On a personal level, he was an able minister, open about Conservative failures and willing to engage with questions others would dodge, but he also bequeathed us Brexit chaos and never achieved one of the great offices of state.
The sense of two Goves carried on till the end: speaking to Rishi Sunak in the final Cabinet meeting before the election was called his message was ‘who dares wins’ but two days later it was ‘actually, not me’ as he stood down from his Surrey Heath constituency.
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Posted: May 23, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Leasehold, Private renting | Tags: Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act, Renters (Reform) Bill |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
And they’re off – but as the election campaign begins it’s easy to lose sight of what could get left at the starting gate.
An immediate consequence of Rishi Sunak’s decision to go for July 4 rather than an Autumn election is that two of the most important pieces of housing legislation in years look like they will run out of parliamentary time.
The Renters (Reform) Bill and Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill have passed all their stages in the Commons and most of them in the Lords.
In theory they could still be passed in stripped-down form as part of the wash-up process before parliament is dissolved on Friday provided both parties agree. However, as I’m writing this neither is currently listed in Lords business for today or tomorrow so the signs are not good.
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Jules Birch 