‘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.
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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.
The final countdown
Posted: May 6, 2015 Filed under: Help to Buy, Housing market, Mansion tax, Planning, Right to buy | Tags: Election 2015 1 CommentIt’s been a tough job with so many to choose from but here are my 10 worst housing policies of the election campaign.
As we prepare to go to the polls, here are a few final reminders of what’s on offer:
1) We’re not going to tell you (Conservative). With extra points for repeated appearances, the Tory refusal to spell out where £12 billion of cuts in benefit spending will come from takes top spot. I first blogged about this before the short campaign began and we’ve learned little more apart from a pledge (sort of) to protect child benefit. Within hours of Iain Duncan Smith telling the BBC yesterday that ‘the work hasn’t been done yet’ on the specifics, The Guardian was publishing leaked documents with DWP proposals including increasing the bedroom tax and cutting housing benefit completely for the under-25s.
2) Exempt main homes worth to £1 million from inheritance tax (Conservative). Brilliant! A tax cut for the very well housed (aka bribe for Tory voters) that will further establish inheritance in its rightful place as the main route into home ownership.
3) Extend the right to buy to housing association tenants (Conservative). Yes, it’s true we’ve tried this before and had to drop it. Yes, forcing charities to sell their assets is a bit iffy. But trust us now we’ve found a way to pay for it: forcing councils to sell their best stock. All the homes sold will be replaced one for one, honest. What’s that you say? It doesn’t stack up? Sorry, we seem to be running out of time for questions on this one.
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No surprises from Labour
Posted: April 13, 2015 Filed under: Affordable housing, Bedroom tax, Help to Buy, Housing benefit, Housing market, Local government | Tags: Labour Leave a commentIf you’re looking for anything new on housing in the Labour manifesto you’re going to have to search very hard for it.
The party’s priorities were clearly elsewhere in the document launched this morning and the housing sections are largely rehashes of Labour’s response to the Lyons Review and of previous statements on social security.
Housing gets a mention in the introduction but only in relation to housebuilding and home ownership:
‘We are not building the homes we need. Our sons and daughters have been shut out of the housing market and too often they are forced to leave the communities where they were brought up.’
Plan C
Posted: April 7, 2015 Filed under: Help to Buy, Housebuilding, Housing market, Right to buy, Starter homes | Tags: George Osborne 3 CommentsSo the Conservatives will pledge a ‘housing revolution’ at the election. Sound familiar?
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph over the weekend, George Osborne outlined a Tory plan to help a million more people into home ownership in the next parliament thanks to schemes like Help to Buy, Right to Buy and the Starter Home scheme.
‘I would like to see us double the number of first time buyers, up to half a million. That is the kind of level we saw in the 1980s. There is no reason why our country can’t achieve that again. That’s a goal we set ourselves today.
‘I think we can deliver a revolution in home ownership and make this the home-owning democracy, the home-owning society that I think is one of the Conservatives’ core beliefs.’
The chancellor says that visiting building sites is ‘the best part of my job’, not to mention donning high-vis jackets and being pictured with happy first-time buyers. ‘It reminds me of why we are doing this. Ultimately this is about people’s aspirations, their futures and their dreams.’
Helping hand
Posted: February 9, 2015 Filed under: Affordable housing, Civil service, Help to Buy, Housebuilding | Tags: George Osborne Leave a commentSo it turns out that subsidising housebuilders may not have been the best way to boost housebuilding after all.
It’s bad enough that even developers are now arguing that the government has made too many concessions to them. Now it turns out that George Osborne was warned by his own civil servants that Help to Buy could end up going to homes that would have been built anyway.
I’m catching up on a week’s worth of news that shakes the twin pillars of government policy on housebuilding and home ownership: cutting ‘red tape’ to make sites more viable for new homes and funding equity loan and guarantee schemes to persuade people to buy them.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Brave new world
Posted: October 27, 2014 Filed under: Affordable housing, Economics, Help to Buy, Housebuilding | Tags: financial instruments, National Audit Office Leave a commentGuess 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.
Starter’s orders
Posted: October 3, 2014 Filed under: Help to Buy, Housebuilding, Housing market | Tags: Conservative conference, David Cameron 1 CommentWho 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
Jules Birch 