Posted: March 10, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Council housing, Housing associations, Housing finance, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
An intriguing Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHLCG) response to a select committee report on Friday might just provide a glimpse into the government’s thinking ahead of the vital spending review due in June.
Back in May 2024 the then Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee sounded the alarm about the finances and sustainability of the social housing sector and called for a whole series of sector-friendly changes.
The response comes 10 months later (long after what is meant to be a 60-day deadline) but the world has changed in the meantime, with a Labour government elected and a renamed department and committee.
So in one sense it is a free hit for MHCLG to echo most of the committee’s warnings and pin the blame for what’s gone wrong on the Conservative administration.
It does not just agree that ‘the social housing sector faces increased financial pressures, exacerbated by years of under-funding and real terms rent cuts’, it also puts some numbers to the flashing blue lights.
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Posted: May 8, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Council housing, Decarbonisation, Fire safety, Housing associations, Housing finance, Rents, Social housing |
Originally written as a blog for Inside Housing.
How long can you keep juggling before it all goes horribly wrong?
That’s the question for social landlords posed by a new report from the all-party Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee on the finances and sustainability of the social housing sector.
Juggling a couple of balls is simple. Three gets easier with practice. Four needs intense focus. Add more balls and external distractions and you risk dropping the lot.
The issues that need to be juggled are familiar ones: how do you continue to build new homes, decarbonise existing ones, fix fire safety problems and regenerate older stock when there is not enough grant to go around, construction, energy and insurance costs have soared and supposedly long-term rent settlements keep being revisited?
As the report points out, we are already seeing the results. Fiona Fletcher-Smith of L&Q told the committee that under the affordable housing programme that ended in 2021 it built 10,000 new homes in London but ‘this year in this programme we are bidding for 1,000. It is a dramatic drop.’
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Posted: June 13, 2023 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Cost of living, Council housing, Housing associations, Housing finance, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
For as long as I can remember the social housing business model seems to have been at a turning point.
From private finance to stock transfer, from affordable rent to welfare reform and from austerity to the rent cut, the policy changes have kept coming against a wider backdrop of financial crisis, Grenfell, Covid, Rochdale and the cost of living crisis.
For years it’s seemed that something has to give – until it does and landlords have to do more with less and tenants get less for more and apparent turning points become spinning in ever-decreasing circles.
This time around, though, you really get the sense that things can’t simply continue as they are and as they have been.
That was what came across quite powerfully both from this week’s first hearing of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee’s inquiry into the finances and sustainability if the social housing sector and from the written evidence submitted in advance. The inquiry continues with a new set of witnesses on Monday.
This is not just about the impossibility of squaring the circle between competing priorities, of continuing to deliver new homes at the same time as fixing unsafe buildings, regenerating ageing estates and decarbonising existing homes.
And it’s no longer just about doing more with less either. The return of inflation, and even larger increases in construction prices, mean delivering the same with much less.
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Posted: October 25, 2019 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Council housing, Housing finance, Uncategorized | Tags: Public Works Loans Board, Treasury |
Originally posted on October 25 on my blog for Inside Housing.
The row over the hike in the interest rate for borrowing from the Public Works Loans Board (PWLB) is important in itself but it also raises a more fundamental point about social housing investment.
The rate increase imposed by the Treasury earlier this month seems to have been sparked by concern about councils investing in shopping centres rather than homes, which is ironic given that their rationale is to find new revenue streams to compensate for Treasury-imposed austerity.
However, it reinforces the impression that the government still does not trust councils to invest wisely in housing or anything else.
That view goes way back to 1979, of course, and the borrowing and spending controls that the Thatcher government imposed on council housing along with the right to buy.
But it also recalls the way that the government finally introduced self-financing in April 2012 but accompanied it with caps on borrowing and then undermined their business plans by imposing the 1% a year rent cut from April 2016.
Now, just at the point when research by Inside Housing reveals that councils are ready to scale up their housebuilding, the beancounters have struck again.
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Posted: June 6, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Housing finance, Private renting, Social housing, Welfare reform |
Ed Miliband has ended three decades of political consensus that it’s better to subsidise rents than new homes but changing course will not be easy.
The Labour leader’s speech in Newham this morning is significant in all kinds of ways: for the party’s positioning ahead of the next election; for the implied switch to contributory benefits and ‘something for something’; for tackling low pay; and for the careful use of ‘social security’ to avoid the loaded term ‘welfare’.
Even the setting – Newham Dockside – is significant since it looks very much like an endorsement of the more proactive but harsher approach to benefit claimants adopted by its mayor Sir Robin Wales.
All of those things could have major implications for housing but none so much as the plan to shift spending back from housing benefit to bricks and mortar – the end of ‘letting housing benefit take the strain’ and admitting the failure over decades to build enough homes.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my post for Inside Housing
Posted: April 4, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing finance, Private renting |
This week’s move by Prudential into the private rented sector one is highly significant for reasons that go far beyond the 500 or so homes involved in the deal.
First reported by the Financial Times on Monday, official confirmation of the Pru’s £105 million deal with Berkeley Homes is extensively covered in today’s papers. See Inside Housing’s story here.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Posted: March 21, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Housing finance, Housing market, Right to buy, Social housing |
Here’s my take on the four key questions for housing coming out of the Budget so far.
1) Is Osborne just blowing bubbles? There are sound reasons why the government might want to help people buy new homes or help first-time buyers get mortgages. The equity loan and mortgage guarantee schemes under Help to Buy are extensions of the existing FirstBuy and NewBuy schemes.
However, put them together and you have new schemes that will go to more people and go further up the income scale (a mortgage of up to £600,000 would suggest a household income of getting on for £200,000) without any guarantees that they will result in any more new homes being built. The equity loan option will be available on all homes but is designed to exclude second home owners and buy to let landlords. However, where NewBuy only applied to new homes, the mortgage guarantee will apply to the whole market. And on the Today programme this morning George Osborne repeatedly ducked questions about whether second and multiple home owners would be able to apply. It seems that any attempt at targeting new supply or first-time buyers has been abandoned in a desperate attempt to get the housing market moving before the next election.
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Posted: August 30, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Economics, Housing finance, Social housing |
Housing has gained an unexpected new ally in the battle to convince the government to fund more affordable new homes.
City broker Tullett Prebon is better known for its warnings of financial Armageddon and for shoot-from-the-hip appearances on the Today programme by its chief executive Terry Smith. It has even argued that financial austerity and severe cuts in public spending are a myth spun by the government to the bond markets.
But now a report by its global head of research Tim Morgan argues not only that a house building programme is one the few options left for the government, but also that it must be social housing funded by public investment.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Posted: August 22, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Economics, Housing finance, Social housing |
If the government can change the public borrowing rules for roads, why not for council housing?
The papers this morning (see here and here) have been briefed that the government growth package to be launched when parliament returns next month will include not just a housebuilding stimulus but a radical new plan to boost road building.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Posted: May 30, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Housing finance |
There’s been a real change in the way the government is talking about housing investment over the last week. Is it just talk or more than that?
Several days out of news and twitter contact have left me catching up with what seems a noticeable change in tone from the Lib Dem side of the government.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 