‘Here’s how to build a home owning Britain’
Posted: July 5, 2015 Filed under: Affordable housing, Help to Buy, Home ownership, Housing associations, Housing benefit, Right to buy, Starter homes | Tags: David Cameron, George Osborne 1 CommentHere is the full text of the belligerent op-ed on housing by David Cameron and George Osborne in Saturday’s Times. My post on the implications is here.
Here’s how to build a home owning Britain
David Cameron and George Osborne
A shake-up of inheritance tax and crackdown on nimby councils will give young people a foothold on the property ladder
At a time of uncertainty abroad, here at home we will be delivering a budget next week with economic stability at its heart, offering security for working people.
Encouraging home ownership is central to that. Having your own place is an important stake in our economy. It’s also one of the best expressions of the aspirational country we want to build, where hard work is rewarded.
It’s also about social justice. We don’t want this to be a country where if you’re rich you can buy a home, but if you’re less well off you can’t. We want it to be One Nation, where whoever you are, you can get on in life.
Read the rest of this entry »
Death of the Ideal Home
Posted: June 1, 2015 Filed under: Buy to let, Home ownership Leave a commentWas this the week when the dream of home ownership in Britain was finally killed off by the greed of buy to let?
All this week the Daily Mail is telling its readers ‘How to Join the Buy to Let Boom’ and offering them a chance to ‘secure your family’s future’ by winning a ‘£260k buy to let house’. Here’s the top half of Monday’s front page (courtesy of @DawnHFoster):
Blue skies: Part two
Posted: May 27, 2015 Filed under: Affordable housing, Bedroom tax, Benefit cap, Garden cities, Help to Buy, Home ownership, Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Local government, Planning, Starter homes, Welfare reform | Tags: Conservatives Leave a commentIs One Nation Conservatism anything more than PR puff? The conclusion of my blog sets out 12 tests of what it could and should mean in housing.
In the wake of the unexpected election result influential voices within the Conservative Party talked about the need for a new appeal to the aspirational working classes. Whether it’s called Blue Collar or One Nation Conservatism, the idea is to shake off the negativity of the nasty party, steal Labour’s clothes and lock in another majority for 2020.
Part one of this blog featured calls by people like Tim Montgomerie, David Green, Nick de Bois and Christian Guy not just for a radical new approach to housebuilding to spread the benefits of home ownership but also a new approach to housing to meet the needs of renters. Guy called housing ‘one of the social justice issues of our time’. There was more of this over the weekend, with Chris Walker of Policy Exchange calling housing ‘key to a Conservative vision for working people’.
But what does all this Tory philosophising amount to? The desire to appeal to aspirational workers (and for power in 2020) is certainly genuine enough but is the party really ready for its implications? The suspicion remains that this is as much about redefining the meaning of ‘One Nation’ as it is about changing course: one nation for those able to Work Hard and Do the Right Thing that looks the other way when it comes to those who cannot and ignores the fact that many of them will still not be able to pay their rent.
Blue skies: Part one
Posted: May 22, 2015 Filed under: Home ownership, Welfare state | Tags: Conservatives, Greg Clark, Macmillan Leave a commentIs all the talk of One Nation Conservatism just spin or is there some substance that could mean good news for housing?
In the wake of their surprise election victory, and with the opposition in disarray, senior Tories have moved to claim the centre ground: David Cameron wants ‘blue collar Conservatism’; Robert Halfon says the Tories are the true Workers Party; and it’s full steam ahead for George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse. Even Cameron’s guru Steve Hilton is back in town calling the Living Wage a ‘moral absolute’.
It’s easy to be cynical about all of this when the party ended the campaign seemingly committed to taxing less and spending more at the same time as it runs a budget surplus. As things stand, expect lots of references to cutting tax for people on the minimum wage and rather fewer to cutting their tax credits and housing benefit. Those £12 billion cuts in welfare spending, plus another £13 billion of cuts in departmental budgets are yet to be spelt out.
Jules Birch 