Posted: May 11, 2022 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Leasehold, Planning, Private renting, Regulation, Section 21, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
It certainly looks like Her Majesty’s Government is doing something on housing – but is that the limit of the ambitions expressed in the Queen’s Speech?
As ever, background briefing notes provide more detail than the speech delivered this year by the future King.
Two promised headline Bills fulfil commitments to reform private renting and the regulation of social housing but both are long overdue.
A third pointedly does not include plans announced in the 2021 Queen’s Speech to reform the planning system to deliver more homes.
And there are vague promises of further ‘housing reform’ but no specifics or commitments to legislation to back them up.
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Posted: April 13, 2022 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Private renting, Regulation, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing
This is shaping up to be a significant year for the regulation of rented housing, with the Social Housing Regulation Bill set to be followed by a white paper on the private rented sector.
While there are still clear differences between the two sectors, there are also similarities in terms of landlords who are unaccountable and tenants who lack a say. In a hybrid world, social housing has become more business focussed and private renting has become by default home to many of those in the greatest housing need.
Yet while the government’s stance on the regulation of social housing has come into focus – the details remain to be seen but creating a national tenant forum and giving the regulator a consumer focus look like a reversal of the light-touch regulation introduced after 2010 – regulation of private renting consists of ‘piecemeal legislative changes’ and the government lacks the data even to evaluate their impact.
That’s the verdict of MPs on the all-party Public Accounts Committee in a report published today [Wednesday] on the regulation of a sector that has doubled in size in the last 20 years and is now home to 11 million people.
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Posted: February 17, 2022 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Fire safety, Housebuilding, Legal, Private renting | Tags: Michael Gove |
The package of building safety changes announced this week by Michael Gove represents an extraordinary shift on any number of different levels.
Whether it’s effectively banning developers from building anything if they fail to cooperate or rewriting the terms of tens of thousands of leasehold contracts, the amendments to the Building Safety Bill will fundamentally change the way that flats (at least those over 11m) are maintained and managed.
The package inevitably raises a whole series of questions that I’ll return to in a future column but for now I want to concentrate on what it says about the extent of the change in the government’s attitude towards the private sector in housing.
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Posted: May 27, 2021 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Fire safety, Home ownership, Planning, Private renting, Section 21 |
Originally a column for Inside Housing.
Affordable and safe housing for all’. Who could argue with that?
Pretty much everyone, funnily enough, because this was the title of the housing part of the House of Commons debate on the humble address following the Queen’s Speech.
Catching up with last week’s debate, two things struck me really powerfully: first, just how much politics has been turned on its head; and second just how riddled with contradictions the government’s position on housing really is.
In the post-Brexit and (hopefully) post-Covid world, the more that the blanks in the empty slogan of levelling up are filled up, the clearer the first becomes.
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Posted: May 12, 2021 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Fire safety, Leasehold, Planning, Private renting, Social housing | Tags: Queen's Speech 2021 |
Building back better? Safer? Fairer? How about slower?
At first glance this is a Queen’s Speech that looks full of welcome reforms to planning and the delivery of new homes, conditions for renters and leaseholders and building safety. Scratch beneath the surface in the background briefing notes, though, and big questions remain and there are big battles to come.
Ahead of the speech, the Planning Bill was spun as ‘cruical’ to levelling up, a way to cement Conservative advances in the Midlands and North by boosting home ownership.
But that ignores the battle to come with Tory backbenchers over housebuilding in the South East.
A cynical outcome from the white paper would be to emphasise local growth as you allow councils in expensive areas to designate large parts of them for protection. This would do next to nothing to tackle affordability – or address the very real questions about the future of Section 106 – but the politics will be very tempting.
In the wake of Grenfell, the government will ‘continue to deliver on the Social Housing White Paper proposals’ and ‘legislate as soon as practicable’.
But Grenfell was almost four years ago and the social housing white paper that was published in November that took more than three years. Practicable? Grenfell United has already called it a ‘betrayal’.
Improvements will come in the proposed Building Safety Bill which is at last delivering on the improved regime promised after the fire.
However, that in itself is a delayed opportunity to address the plight of hundreds of thousands of leaseholders after ministers steadfastly resisted all amendments to the Fire Safety Bill to make it clear they should not have to pay for problems that are not their fault. The stage is set for another huge Commons battle.
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Posted: September 29, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Legal, Private renting, Section 21, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for insidehousing.co.uk.
In March housing secretary Robert Jenrick promised that nobody will lose their home because of the pandemic. In June that turned out to mean that nobody will lose their home ‘this summer’.
The evictions moratorium was extended twice at the 11th hour but there was no movement this time and it ended last Monday – a day before the Autumnal equinox – with an empty promise of ‘comprehensive support for renters’.
If the moratorium had expired a week later – after the new pandemic restrictions for the next six months announced by Boris Johnson on Tuesday and after the new Job Support Scheme announced by Rishi Sunak on Thursday – the pressure for it to be extended would have been overwhelming.
Instead, with promises of Christmas truces, exemptions for areas in lockdown and prioritisation of cases, we have lurched into a situation that ensures that lots of people definitely will lose their homes in the next few months.
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Posted: August 25, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Legal, Private renting, Social housing |
Originally written on August 24 as a column for Inside Housing.
The u-turn was not as dramatic as the one over exam results and it means Robert Jenrick will not for now be joining Gavin Williamson in detention after the politics class.
But, now that it’s happened, does the 11th-hour climbdown over the Coronavirus evictions ban foreshadow a more permanent improvement renters’ rights after the pandemic?
The package announced on Friday following consultation with the judiciary extends the ban by four weeks from August 23 to September 20 in England and Wales. It also extends the notice period for tenants in England from three to six months in all cases except those involving anti-social behaviour and domestic abuse.
This is the second extension to the ban announced at the 11th hour, as it was originally only meant to last until June, then extended to August.
You still have to wonder what took so long: the Welsh Government introduced a six-month notice period under its devolved housing powers a month ago but is reliant on decisions in Westminster about the evictions ban because judicial affairs are not devolved.
It has also announced low-interest loans for tenants in arrears worth £8 million (the equivalent of £140 million in England given its far larger population) and maxed out discretionary housing payments but is still facing pressure to go further.
At least England got there in the end, though. The question now, given that four weeks is not very long, is what comes next?
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Posted: August 20, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Coronavirus, Private renting, Social housing |
Originally published on insidehousing.co.uk on August 24 – before the extension of the evictions ban the following day. Post on that to come.
Just like with Coronavirus and the A levels fiasco, ministers cannot say they have not been warned.
As the clock counts down to the restart of evictions, they can turn a deaf ear to claims from Shelter, Citizens Advice and Generation Rent, the shadow housing secretary and now a range of public health organisations about the wave of evictions and homelessness that is about to hit them.
They can turn a blind eye to the action taken by their counterparts in Scotland, Wales and now Northern Ireland to get ahead of the situation and deliver more help for renters.
And they can choose to ignore what’s already happening in parts of the United States, where some cities have turned convention centres into huge court annexes to cope with the surge of cases there.
As I write this on Thursday morning, nothing, including a last-minute u-turn, can be ruled out with this government, but as it stands things will return to insecure normality for renters from the start of next week.
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Posted: May 28, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Coronavirus, Fire safety, Private renting, Rough sleeping |
Originally posted on May 28 as a column for Inside Housing.
What then? It’s the question that’s been left hanging in most of the housing elements of the government’s response to the Coronavirus and much more besides.
There was a partial answer on what happens to thousands of temporarily accommodated rough sleepers as the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) accelerated funding to make 3,300 housing units available over the next 12 months.
There was an answer of sorts for leaseholders living in unsafe buildings as MHCLG opened registrations for its new £1 billion Building Safety Fund that extends help to other forms of dangerous cladding as well as Aluminium Composite Material (ACM).
And there was a welcome one for millions of home owners with mortgages as the Treasury extended the chance to apply for a payment holiday by another three months and Financial Conduct Authority guidance made clear that banks should not start of continue repossession proceedings until the end of October given the uncertainty faced by customers and government advice on social distancing and self-isolation.
But there is still no answer for millions of social and private renters asking what will happen when the moratorium on evictions ends on June 25.
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Posted: May 22, 2020 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Coronavirus, Legal, Private renting, Rough sleeping, Section 21, Uncategorized |
The government will miss a ‘golden opportunity’ to end rough sleeping once and for all if it fails to turn temporary measures into something more permanent.
And ministers must beef up ‘toothless’ plans to protect renters in the wake of the Coronavirus crisis or risk a new wave of homelessness.
Those are the top-line messages from an all-party group of MPs today. But an interim report on protecting rough sleepers and renters from the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee also goes much further in endorsing calls by campaigners for wider changes to the housing system.
They recommend:
- A dedicated funding stream to end rough sleeping, likely to be at least £100 million a year
- Improved support for councils to help people with no recourse to public funds who will otherwise end up back on the streets
- Boosting the supply of suitable housing by re-establishing the National Clearing House Scheme set up after the financial crisis for unsold homes and giving councils more flexibility to buy them
- Turning the increase in the Local Housing Allowance to the 30th percentile from a temporary into a long-term measure and looking at the impact of raising rents further.
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Jules Birch 