The Westferry affair and planning reform
Posted: June 29, 2020 Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning, Section 106 | Tags: Robert Jenrick 1 CommentOriginally posted as a column for Inside Housing on June 29.
A cartoon in a national newspaper last week showed a pig about to dive into a trough from a springboard marked ‘Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government’ saying ‘I declare this development officially open’.
It was an indication if any were needed of how the Westferry Printworks affair has left the impression that the planning system is a ‘Tory funny money’ game of Monopoly (another cartoon two days later).
Richard Desmond’s £12,000 donation to the Conservatives may be small change but the timing shortly after housing secretary Robert Jenrick approved his plans for a £1 billion housing development still stinks.
It leaves the housing secretary looking – in the most generous interpretation of events – naïve in his dealings with the billionaire.
A look ahead to the Budget part one: the land question
Posted: November 13, 2017 Filed under: Budget, Compulsory purchase, Land, Section 106 | Tags: Churchill, Civitas, Joseph Chamberlain Leave a commentOriginally published as a column for Inside Housing on November 13.
More than ever before, this year’s Budget looks like a watershed moment for housing.
Philip Hammond is under mounting pressure from all sides to do something big and bold and break with the failed policies of the past.
The calls for something radical are coming from more than just the usual suspects and are for more than just a cheque with lots of zeros.
Conservative MPs know that they cling to power (just) thanks to the votes of elderly home owners. Brexit may dominate everything but many of them realise that beneath the surface housing is one of the key issues poisoning their relationship with the under-45s.
They understand that cynical policies like Help to Buy are no longer enough, that the party is running out of time and that it has to look at policies that were previously unthinkable.
Yet conventional wisdom says that we’ve heard all this before, that Hammond’s caution and the Treasury’s orthodoxy will turn thinking that was big and bold into outcomes that are tame and timid on November 22.
After the announcements in the last few weeks of an extra £10bn for Help to Buy, another £2bn for social housing and the u-turn on the LHA cap for social and supported housing, how much is left for the chancellor to say (or spend)?
However, another view says that the housing question has such serious social, economic and political implications that the answers cannot be put off any longer. See this blog by Toby Lloyd for a good round-up of some possibilities.
In a series of columns ahead of the Budget, I’ll be looking at some of the crucial questions concerning investment, tax and welfare and, to kick things off, land. Will the Budget be big and bold – or tame and timid?
The Housing Bill: fresh start
Posted: April 12, 2016 Filed under: Affordable housing, Planning, Section 106, Starter homes | Tags: Housing and Planning Bill Leave a commentOriginally posted on April 12 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Otto von Bismarck famously said that laws are like sausages: it is better not to see how they are made.
One exception to the Iron Chancellor’s dictum could be the way that the UK House of Lords takes the distasteful raw ingredients of legislation and improves it with new recipes.
That was certainly the case on the first day of the report stage of the Housing and Planning Bill on Monday, which saw the government twice suffer major defeats and also make a significant concession on starter homes.
As the Bill now stands, this ‘cuckoo in the nest’ of affordable housing (as Lord Best memorably called it at the committee stage) has been cut down to size a bit: the discount will be repayable over 20 years rather than eight; and local authorities will have the flexibility to decide on local needs rather than targeting virtually all section 106 contributions as starter homes. The government also accepted another amendment that will exempt rural exceptions sites from the starter home requirement.
Ministers had already moved slightly on the discount period: the Bill originally said that starter home buyers would be able to sell without repaying any of the 20% discount after five years but a consultation proposes extending that to eight years with the discount tapering away over that period.
The Housing Bill: just for starters
Posted: January 6, 2016 Filed under: Affordable housing, Housing associations, Planning, Private renting, Section 106, Starter homes | Tags: Housing and Planning Bill Leave a commentOriginally posted on January 6 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
MPs staggered bleary eyed from the House of Commons at 2am last night without even getting to the most contentious parts of the Housing and Planning Bill.
Despite a series of obituaries for council housing and a ‘Kill the Bill’ protest outside, issues such as forced high-value sales, Pay to Stay and the voluntary Right to Buy will only be considered on day two of the report stage debate (set for next Tuesday, January 12).
Last night’s five-hour debate included starter homes, the regulation of housing associations, rogue landlords and the planning system. Opposition MPs complained that 65 pages of new clauses and amendments had been added at the last minute to a Bill that was only 145 pages long.
I blogged back in October that this a Bill written on the back of a fag packet and last night only confirmed that impression. The Bill also leaves a series of crucial decisions to be made by ministers by regulation later.
Nothing sums this up more than new clause 31 on planning obligations and affordable housing. This adds starter homes selling for up to £450,000 to the existing definition of affordable housing: homes for people whose needs are not adequately served by the market. However, it also adds that:
‘The Secretary of State may by regulations amend this section so as to modify the definition of “affordable housing”.’
Keep your friends close – Part 2
Posted: November 30, 2015 Filed under: Affordable housing, Buy to let, Help to Buy, Home ownership, Housebuilding, Housing associations, Second homes, Section 106 | Tags: George Osborne, spending review Leave a commentOriginally posted on November 30 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Part 1 of this blog looked at the apparent winners and the big losers from George Osborne’s announcements last week. But there is one more group lurking on the edges of the playground, ostracised by virtually everyone. What happened to George’s well-heeled former chums should be a warning to everyone else.
Buy-to-let landlords and second home owners thought they had worked hard, done the right thing, bought a house and then another (and another). Contrary to what everyone said about them driving up house prices and destroying local communities, they thought they were providing desperately needed homes and helping pay for local services. They thought the Conservatives were on their side after they blocked a Labour tax rise on second homes in 2010 and kept buy to let out of European mortgage regulation in 2013.
They thought George was ‘one of us’. After all, he made £450,000 profit on his taxpayer-funded second home and rents out his main home for £10,000 a month while he lives in Downing Street. And they voted Conservative in May when those horrible Labour oiks planned rent regulation and a mansion tax.
Their thanks for all this? Sand kicked in their faces with cuts in tax relief in July and the Chinese Burn of hikes in stamp duty and capital gains tax in November. The fate of these entrepreneurs and investors turned enemies of aspiration should be a warning for all those who are currently part of the Osborne in-crowd.
Beyond meaning
Posted: November 11, 2015 Filed under: Affordable housing, Pay to stay, Section 106, Starter homes | Tags: affordability, Brandon Lewis, Housing and Planning Bill Leave a commentOriginally posted on November 11 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
So now it is official. Brandon Lewis has confirmed that ‘affordable’ means 80% of the market rate.
His statement at a Communities and Local Government Committee hearing on the Housing Bill confirms a direction of travel that has been clear ever since the creation of ‘affordable’ rent. Starter homes at a 20% discount to the full price now represent ‘affordable’ home ownership. Needless to say, neither is exactly affordable by any conventional definition of the word.
The minister’s statement came in this exchange with Labour MP Jo Cox:
Cox: Do you think there should be a statutory definition of affordability for both rent and purchase?’
Lewis: At the moment it’s 80% of the market value, whether to rent or purchase.
Cox: But there isn’t a statutory definition.
Lewis: Well, the definition of affordability… an affordable rent is 80% of market value and affordable purchase with starter homes it would effectively be 80% of market value.
Noises off
Posted: November 3, 2015 Filed under: Housing associations, London, Pay to stay, Right to buy, Section 106, Starter homes | Tags: Housing and Planning Bill, ONS Leave a commentOriginally posted on November 3 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
As MPs debated the Housing and Planning Bill on Monday it was hard to escape the impression that the real action was elsewhere.
From the extension of the right to buy to the forced sale of council houses to starter homes, key discussions had either already happened or were still taking place outside the Commons chamber. Yes, talks behind the scenes are an inevitable part of any Bill, but far more so with this one than any other that I can remember. Yes, the Deal removes what would have been a key element in the legislation from parliamentary scrutiny but this is about more than just that.
That’s partly because this is a back of a fag packet Bill that sets out some general principles with the detail to be filled in later. We still know little more about how the sums will add up for paying housing association discounts from forced council sales than during the election campaign. And, as Alex Marsh points out in relation to Pay to Stay, there are whole chunks of the Bill that give the secretary of state the power to do pretty much whatever they like.
Jules Birch 