Does the Budget shift the dial on housing?

Posted: October 31, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Budget, Fire safety, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Rents, Right to buy, Social housing | Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

A final verdict will have to wait for the spending review in the Spring but how should we assess the first Labour Budget for 14 years?

The answer of course depends on what you take as your starting point. Compared with the disastrous first Conservative Budget in 2010 or even the first Labour one in 1997, this one takes some definite steps in the right direction.

But does this Budget live up to Labour rhetoric about greater investment and long-term solutions. To what extent will it really ‘fix the foundations’ and deliver ‘the biggest boost to affordable and social housing for a generation’?

Here are 10 key areas that I was looking out for:

1) New social homes: The £500 million top-up to the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) briefed in advanceis welcome news but it must only be a down-payment on a far bigger increase for the next AHP after 2026.

It is at the lower end of expectations of up to £1 billion extra and it will not be enough to make up for a shortfall in delivery caused by construction cost inflation and other pressures on social landlords. The current AHP is on course to deliver between 110,000 and 130,000 affordable homes over five years rather than the 180,000 originally expected while need is estimated at 90,000 social homes a year.

All of which puts the 5,000 the government says will be generated by the top-up into perspective.

Details of ‘future grant investment’ in the next AHP will be set out in the spending review and will support a mix of tenures ‘with a focus on delivering homes for social rent’.

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Reeves raises expectations on investment

Posted: September 26, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Energy efficiency, Housebuilding, Social housing | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

For the most part, this was a Labour conference of nudges and winks rather than major announcements.

That is no coincidence because major decisions across government are being left to the Budget and one-year spending review next month and the multi-year spending review to follow in the Spring.  

So for all the debate at what looked like an unprecedented number of fringe meetings on housing in Liverpool, for all the promises from the conference podium of brownfield passports and help for homeless veterans and care leavers, there was comparatively little that signalled the direction the new government intends to take. 

The one exception was not a surprise: the reinstatement by net zero secretary Ed Miliband of the 2030 target to bring all rented homes up to a minimum level of Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) C by 2030.

The announcement reinstates an earlier target for Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards that was scrapped by Rishi Sunak and extends it to social and private rented homes

That will have major implications given that the costs of retrofitting social housing alone far exceed Labour’s scaled-back plans for green grants and loans.

Without a boost, that could accelerate the sell-off of older private rented stock and encourage social landlords to consolidate theirs, at the same time as it focusses their attention even more on improving their existing homes rather than building new ones.

On new homes, the big question for me is the relationship between Labour’s target of 1.5 million new homes in this parliament and its manifesto promise on affordable and social housing.’

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The trouble with targets

Posted: September 20, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning, Section 106, Social housing, Wales | Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

The trouble with targets

Housing targets concentrate minds in government and drive delivery but they also come with trade-offs attached.

As Labour gears up for its first party conference since gaining power, much of the attention will be on announcements that fill in the blanks in how it is going to achieve its manifesto target of 1.5 million new homes in this parliament.

Superficially unambitious – it’s no more than the 2019 Tory manifesto promise 300,000 of 300,000 new homes by the mid-2020s – it is actually a huge stretch, with ministers expecting no more than 200,000 net additional dwellings in this financial year as a starting point. 

That will leave a growing shortfall to be made up in the later years of the parliament and could require more like 400,000 new homes a year to be built by the late 2020s.

Having a target in place is important because it drives activity within government, especially when it is backed by the rise of Labour yimbyism.

But a target does not guarantee delivery in itself, even with the magic added ingredient of planning reform.

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Pulling the policy levers

Posted: August 1, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, New towns, Planning, Right to buy, Social housing | Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing

The last day of term is traditionally a time when nothing much happens and we get set for the holidays to come.

Not so much for Angela Rayner. The deputy prime minister marked the last day in parliament before the summer recess this week with a flurry of announcements, guidance and consultation. 

Most of these – planning reforms including a new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), a new towns taskforce, changes to the right to buy – were foreshadowed in the election campaign and early days of the new government. 

However, both her written statement and what she outlined to MPs including some intriguing hints of changes that go well beyond supply and planning. 

And there was also an important piece of context: Rayner said the government now expects to deliver just 200,000 new homes in England in this financial year. That is 100,000 fewer than the annual average needed to meet its target of 1.5 million and will ramp up the pressure in the later years of this parliament.

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Who’s in and who’s out in the new parliament?

Posted: July 8, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning | Tags: | Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

It’s all change for housing at Westminster after a stunning election victory for Labour. More than half of the MPs who will be sworn in this week are new to the Commons while decades of experience on the green benches were swept away in the Conservatives’ worst defeat of the modern era. 

Just about the only continuity so far came with confirmation that Angela Rayner will step across from her shadow role to become the new deputy prime minister and secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities and minister of state while former shadow housing minister Matthew Pennycook will be one of her ministers of state.

That promises well with a busy agenda to come. Despite the implication that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) will keep the title it was given under Boris Johnson, there is speculation that a new name is imminent. 

James Riding has already introduced many of the new MPs on the Labour side, while the Labour Housing Group focussed on eight of them on Red Brick ahead of the election, but it’s worth highlighting some of the results that have extra resonance:

Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield): There are two big reasons to start here. First, because Lewin worked for Clarion for seven years, most recently as director of communications, second because of who he beat. Grant Shapps was the first and longest-serving housing minister since 2010 and associated with many of the most contentious changes under the coalition. He was the minister responsible for ending top-down housebuilding targets and the creation of the New Homes Bonus and was also a supporter of ending lifetime tenancies and defender of what he called the removal of the spare room subsidy.

Dan Tomlinson (Chipping Barnet): Another double reason for celebration. First, the defeated Tory incumbent was Theresa Villiers, one of the leaders of the backbench rebellion that led to the Conservative retreat on housebuilding and planning that will now be reversed under Labour. Second, Tomlinson is an economist who has worked at the Treasury and most recently the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, so should be well placed to advocate for anti-poverty and pro-housing policies. He grew up on free school meals and was homeless for a time as a child. 

Sarah Sackman (Finchley and Golders Green): Taking Margaret Thatcher’s old seat of Finchley and Golders Green was a symbolic victory for Labour and winning in a constituency with a large Jewish population is seen as a vindication of Keir Starmer’s firm line on anti-semitism. A barrister specialising in planning and environmental law, expertise that could be very useful for this government, Sackman has acted for local authorities and charities such as Shelter. She also acted for residents in a case that saw a High Court judge quash planning permission for Curo no demolish and rebuild large parts of the Foxhill Estate in Bath.

Danny Beales, Uxbridge and South Ruislip: Taking Boris Johnson’s old seat after losing in the by-election last year was another symbolic result for Labour. Beales experienced homelessness, temporary accommodation and life in bed and breakfast as a child and was previously cabinet member for new homes, jobs and communities at Camden Council.

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Optimism, realism and disorientation as Labour takes power

Posted: July 5, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Social housing | Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

Labour’s huge election victory is undoubtedly good news for housing but will it take this once-in-a-generation chance to prove that ‘change’ is more than just a slogan?

You’ll have to have worked in housing for more than 25 years to remember the last time Labour successfully regained power in 1997.

Then, as now, the party took over after a long period in which Conservative governments got to set the parameters of the housing system on everything from tax to investment and planning to benefits.

The Blair-Brown governments made solid progress on homelessness and decent homes and eventually boosted investment in new homes but they blew the chance to change things more fundamentally.

Keir Starmer takes over at a time when housing is significantly higher up the political agenda but the economic backdrop is far bleaker.

So how should we react to Labour’s stunning victory?

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Housing’s brief appearance in the election spotlight

Posted: June 20, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Home ownership, Housebuilding, New towns, Planning, Private renting, Right to buy | Leave a comment

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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Labour’s cautious manifesto offers hints of real ‘change’

Posted: June 13, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Fire safety, Housebuilding, Leasehold, Planning, Private renting | Leave a comment

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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A sheepish Conservative manifesto that misses the target

Posted: June 11, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Fire safety, Help to Buy, Home ownership, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Leasehold, Stamp duty | Tags: | Leave a comment

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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Gove enters the multiverse

Posted: February 16, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Home ownership, Housebuilding, Planning | Tags: | Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

Everything everywhere all at once’ is how Michael Gove describes the welter of proposals on housing announced this week and under consideration for the Budget next month.

In one of the alternative realities that make up in the multiverse in the 2022 film, this is his Long-Term Plan for Housing producing results at last. In another, the Conservatives end their in-fighting and build on their victories in Thursday’s two by-elections.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, the housing secretary makes clear what he believes is at stake if young people feel they are excluded from home ownership: ‘If people think that markets are rigged and a democracy isn’t listening to them, then you get — and this is the worrying thing to me — an increasing number of young people saying, ‘I don’t believe in democracy, I don’t believe in markets.’

And he says he remains committed to a ban no-fault evictions via the Renters Reform Bill and determined to face down opposition from ‘vested interests’ to the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill.

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