Brave new world

Posted: October 27, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Economics, Help to Buy, Housebuilding | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Guess what the total value of government financial instruments to support new homes will be by 2021.

The answer that leapt off the page at me in a report on the department’s performance published by the National Audit Office (NAO) last week is a cool £24 billion. And that is just the direct support that comes under the DCLG and its agencies.

Perhaps the figure should not come as a surprise. After all, ever since the financial crisis we’ve grown used to the government adopting new ways of financing things that do not rely on conventional spending or borrowing.

The three programmes that make up the £24 billion are £10 billion for financial guarantees to housing associations and the private rented sector to help build new homes, £9.7 billion for the Help to Buy equity loan scheme (HTB1) and £4.2 billion for other loans and investments such as Build to Rent and the large sites scheme.

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2020 visions

Posted: October 20, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Local government, Social housing | Tags: | Leave a comment

So what clues does the Lyons Review offers us about housing up to 2020? Here are some more thoughts.

The review is important in its own right as one of the most significant political reports on housing in the last ten years. However, it also gives us a much more detailed impression of what life will be like under a Labour government in the second half of this decade to add to the outlines of what we can expect under the Conservatives.

I argued in my blog last week that Lyons is good on housebuilding but offers little to supporters of social housing. If you judge the review by what it was asked to do (provide recommendations to Labour on how to get to 200,000 new homes a year in England by 2020) your verdict will tend to be positive. If on the other hand you ask whether recommendations made within these constraints are enough to solve the housing crisis you will be much more negative (for example, see this blog by Alex Hilton).

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

 

Lyons made

Posted: October 16, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Garden cities, Housebuilding, Planning, Social housing | Tags: | Leave a comment

The Lyons Review is the most significant report on new housing supply in years but it’s much more convincing on private sector housebuilding than social housing.

Lyons picks up where Barker left off on housing in 2004 (and on planning in 2007) but with two added bits of context. First, we’ve gone backwards in the last ten years: annual output is around half what we needed and the backlog of unmet need is mounting by the day. Second, any solutions have to operate under severe political and financial constraints.

So anyone reading the report whose priority is more social housing will come away disappointed with the recommendations for a future Labour government. There will be no change in the borrowing rules for council housing and no increase in the borrowing caps except for potential swapping between authorities. The case for continuing and increased grant subsidy is accepted but subject to overall constraints on public spending in which social housing will be an unspecified ‘priority’ for more money.

And anyone hoping for a shift in the political obsession with aspiration and ownership rather than homes will already have been disappointed by the advance coverage. The Labour Party’s spin has been all about first-time buyers and ‘homes for locals’ even though they get relatively minor mentions in the report itself.

However, as with the launch setting of Milton Keynes the report offers solid grounds for optimism too. Here at last is consensus on a long-term strategy in place of the short-term gimmicks we’ve seen ever since the financial crisis.

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

The H word

Posted: October 9, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Nick Clegg’s failure to mention housing in his leader’s speech feels like a suitably downbeat conclusion to the final party conference season before the election.

As I blogged earlier in the week, on paper the Lib Dems have the best housing policies of any of the mainstream parties. A target of 300,000 homes a year, a housing investment bank and powers for local authorities to suspend the right to buy will please most people reading this. A succession of MPs, including all three of Clegg’s potential successors, made all the right noises about housing on the conference floor and in countless fringe meetings.

So does it matter that Clegg failed to use the H word?

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Paper tigers?

Posted: October 6, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Social housing | Tags: | 1 Comment

As so often before the Lib Dems look like going into the next election with the best housing policies. On paper anyway.

Admittedly the competition is not high given the caution from Labour and divisiveness and hints about the end of grant from the Conservatives. However, the policies emerging from the Lib Dem conference in Glasgow look like they’ve been tested on a focus group consisting of people who care about housing.

This morning the party passed a motion calling for 300,000 homes a year, a new deal for renters, a housing investment bank and new powers for local authorities and housing associations to build plus measures to secure land at lower prices and remove barriers to house price stability. That was promptly amended to include a new power for local authorities to suspend the right to buy.

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Starter’s orders

Posted: October 3, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Help to Buy, Housebuilding, Housing market | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Who did David Cameron have in mind when he talked about the ‘vested interests’ that are blocking new homes?

Given the effort that goes in to honing a conference speech to get the messages exactly right, and the fact that the prime minister was reading from an autocue rather than speaking without notes like Ed Miliband, it seems safe to assume that he meant exactly what he said. Here’s what he told the Conservative conference this week:

‘For those wanting to buy a home, yes – we will help you get on that housing ladder…but only if we take on the vested interests, and build more homes – however hard that is.’

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Visions and promises

Posted: September 29, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a comment

As the parties hold their final conferences before the 2015 general election, housing has a high political profile. Here are five themes I’ve noticed so far.

1) Priorities, priorities

‘Building as many homes as we need’ is the fifth of Ed Miliband’s six national goals by 2025. The big questions remain how we achieve that and whether it will be possible without substantial extra investment in new affordable homes. So it was definitely good news that the Labour leader had this to say too: ‘We will also make housing the top priority for additional capital investment in the next parliament.’ However, that can taken at face value or as an indication that it will not be top priority in its initial investment plans.

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Home nations

Posted: September 23, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales | Leave a comment

How do the different nations of the UK compare when it comes to housebuilding and the wider housing market?

An official report out this week reveals a fascinating snapshot of housing across the union that survived last week’s referendum. The housing stock, tenure, housebuilding, house prices and rents are all broken down in a report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that is much more comprehensive than its title (Trends in the UK housing market, 2014) implies.

Most of the trends will be familiar to regular readers of Inside Housing but what really struck me is the comparison between the different regions of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Home front

Posted: September 10, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Garden cities, Housebuilding, Planning | Leave a comment

With eight months to go until the general election the battle to influence the manifestos has begun in earnest.

Party conference season begins with Labour on September 21 but organisations from across the housing spectrum have been publishing manifestos of their own in a bid to reach the politicians.

Conservative Home (see my blog here) was early out of the blocks but the influential Tory website has been followed by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) and Confederation of British Industry (CBI) in the last week. The Fabian Society has just published a report last week on the ‘silent majority’ in favour of more social housing. The National Housing Federation (NHF) is set to reveal its election plans at its conference next week.

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Falling short

Posted: August 21, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding | Leave a comment

Today’s housebuilding figures show welcome progress but four years after taking power the coalition is still many miles away from matching its bold promises.

The good news is that starts in the second quarter (April to June) of 2014 were up 18 per cent on a year ago. Completions are up 7 per cent on the same basis. The UK as a whole is also identified as the housing market with the fastest growth in starts in 2013 in a report by Deloitte Real Estate.

But as everyone is pointing out today the 114,590 homes completed over the last 12 months is still less than half the benchmark of 250,000 that we need to meet demand. Even when the 137,620 starts over the last year feed through into completions we will still be well short.

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

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