Dynamic duo

Posted: March 6, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Housing market, Mortgages, Private renting | Leave a comment

So will the next big housing announcement from David Cameron and Nick Clegg amount to any more than the last three?

The Financial Times reported yesterday that the coalition double act are ‘drawing up schemes to revive the flatlining housebuilding industry and help people get on the housing ladder’. On the eve of the Budget on March 20 they will make a series of announcements including measures on shared equity schemes, social housing and support for first-time buyers.

Despite the scoop, even the FT admits that this ‘may be treated with some scepticism given that such announcements on housebuilding have become a regular feature of the coalition – while the industry has continued to stagnate’.

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

Sales pitch

Posted: February 26, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Housing market, Right to buy, Social housing | Leave a comment

So how is it going so far for two ‘ambitious schemes’ that we were told would ‘unlock the aspirations of a new generation of home buyers’?

It was March 2012 when David Cameron and Grant Shapps launched NewBuy and the ‘reinvigorated’ Right to Buy 2. ‘This government doesn’t just talk about expanding home ownership: we’re making it happen,’ said the prime minister.

Even as he was speaking it all seemed a tad ambitious. No wonder, when theEnglish Housing Survey has just shown that home ownership fell again in 2011/12.

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

False start

Posted: February 22, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding | Leave a comment

It’s half time for a government that promised to make us ‘a nation of homebuilders’. The crowd are – to put it mildly – not happy.

Figures released yesterday show the performance of the coalition in the first two and a half years of its five-year term. By now its abolition of ‘Stalinist’ top-down regional strategies and creation of the ‘powerful new incentive’ of the new homes bonus and the National Planning Policy Framework should be working.

Instead housebuilding in England is flat-lining at less than half of the level required. The 26,830 housing starts in the fourth quarter of 2012 were up by 180 on the previous three months but down by 400 on a year ago.

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

Ignoring the obvious

Posted: January 15, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Economics, Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Local government, Social housing | Leave a comment

Without local authorities, England has only seen more than 200,000 housing starts three times since the war. So why is council housing being ignored now?

As John Perry argues in Inside Housing, councils are currently building around 3,000 homes a year but they could build 15,000 if they were given more freedom to borrow. ‘A government that is desperate for house building shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth,’ he says.

Desperate is exactly the right word for our current performance on housebuilding: just 105,000 starts in England in 2011/12, down from a miserable 112,000 in 2010/11 and less than half the level needed to meet demand and prevent an ever-increasing spiral of rising prices and rents.

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Nudging the nimbys

Posted: January 10, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning | 5 Comments

The minister introduces a ‘powerful new incentive’ for local communities to approve new homes. Sound familiar?

I am of course not talking about planning minister Nick Boles and his scheme to give local communities a share of the community infrastructure levy but former housing minister Grant Shapps and the new homes bonus.

As quickly became clear, this wasn’t a bonus and it didn’t have much to do with new homes either. It was more a mechanism for creating winners and losers (affluent areas and deprived ones). In the year before the first payments were made, there were a miserable 113,000 housing starts in England. In the year after, there were 105,000.

So what’s the difference between the Shapps Sweeteners and the Boles Bungs? The planning minister could quite reasonably point out that his cash will get closer to local communities because it will go to parish and town councils whereas the bonus goes to local authorities. In theory at least that should cut out the middle man and make the bribe more persuasive.

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10 things about 2012 – part 2

Posted: December 31, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Housing market, Social housing | Leave a comment

The conclusion of my two-part review of the issues and people I was blogging about in 2012 looks at bullding, owning and affording homes – and a year of anniversaries.

6) Housebuilding: talking a good game

If you measure the importance of an issue by its media profile, 2012 was certainly the year of housebuilding. The first half of the year saw momentum building behind the idea that investment in new homes would be good for the economy as well as people who need a roof over their heads. Support came from economists and politicians (increasingly from the Lib Dem side of the coalition) and even the director-general of the DCLG was talking about a ‘decade of housebuilding’ at the CIH conference in June. Hopes were genuinely high that the case for housing was winning support at the highest levels of government and David Cameron’s party conference speech in October was heavy on anti-nimby rhetotric.

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After the fall

Posted: November 20, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Social housing | Leave a comment

A year ago this week some devastating statistics were published that undermined everything that the government was saying in its housing strategy. Has anything changed 12 months on?

The 97 per cent fall in starts of affordable homes (to just 454 in the whole of England) between April to September 2010 and the same six months in 2011 was published the day after David Cameron and Grant Shapps launched a strategy they claimed was ‘radical and unashamedly ambitious’. Whether the timing was coincidence, cock-up or conspiracy it caused acute embarrassment for the government.

After that, the only way was up. Starts duly picked up in the second half of the year but the acid test was always going to be the number of starts a year later.

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

Running a red light

Posted: November 15, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Housing market | Leave a comment

Halfway through the parliament and one year in to the housing strategy and the traffic lights seem to be taking for ever to change from red to green for housing.

It also looks like a good time to judge the record of this government and a time to stand back and admit that whoever had been in charge over the last two and a half years would have struggled against the grim backdrop of austerity.

Those are points well made by the CIH, NHF and Shelter in their third Housing Report. The good news is that ministers are at last making the right noises about the positive effects of housing investment but, as the report says, pledges and policies are not proof of progress.

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

Where’s the evidence on section 106?

Posted: November 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Planning | Leave a comment

The government’s plans on section 106 and affordable housing came under fire from all sides of both houses of parliament this week – and no wonder.

In the Commons, communities secretary Eric Pickles said the Growth and Infrastructure Bill would cut red tape by allowing the renegotiation of ‘economically unrealistic’ section 106 agreements. ‘In our sights particularly are affordable housing requirements that were negotiated at the height of Labour’s unsustainable housing boom. Now that the Brown bubble has burst, bringing us back to reality with a bump, we recognise that 75,000 homes, with planning permission, are lying unbuilt.’

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

Supply and demand

Posted: November 1, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Private renting | Leave a comment

There is good news, bad news and really bad news in figures out today on housing supply in England.

The good news first: net additional housing supply rose 11 per cent in 2011/12 to 134,900 in 2011. That follows three consecutive annual falls in the wake of the credit crunch and represents a return to the level seen in the early 2000s. Net additional supply is the government’s preferred measure since it includes not just new build homes but gains and losses from demolitions and conversions of buildings from one use to another too.

Net additional housing supply in England (source: DCLG)

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