Posted: November 13, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, Housing benefit, Right to buy, Shared ownership, Social housing | Tags: George Osborne, Greg Clark, Iain Duncan Smith, ONS |
Originally posted on November 13 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Inside Housing: ‘Clark promises deregulation package’. FT: ‘Osborne eyes social housing stake sale.’ Daily Mail: ‘Duncan Smith’s great council house giveaway.’
Three rival visions for housing in England from three rival politicians who all think they know best.
Let’s assume some of this is the result of private disputes about budgets (especially between Osborne and IDS) playing out in public. The run-up to any spending review features media briefings designed to promote pet projects or scupper those of others. But this is still different: it’s not pet projects at stake here but potentially the entire future of housing. And the rival visions directly contradict each other.
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Posted: November 4, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, Right to buy | Tags: Housing and Planning Bill |
Originally posted on November 4 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Here are eight key themes that emerged in evidence from housing association executives to the parliamentary inquiry into the extension of the right to buy.
I wasn’t planning to but I got sucked in to watching the Communities and Local Government committee hearing on housing associations and the right to buy on Wednesday. Across two sessions with witnesses from eight different associations, here’s what I learned:
1) This is not just about the right to buy
The inquiry is meant to be focussed on the right to buy but questions ranged far and wide as MPs asked about the 1% rent cut, Pay to Stay, starter homes, shared ownership, redundancies, reclassification, mergers, you name it. As an indication of the pace of change, they were even questioned about a policy that has not even been announced yet but everyone assumes will be soon (the end of lifetime tenancies).
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Posted: November 3, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, London, Pay to stay, Right to buy, Section 106, Starter homes | Tags: Housing and Planning Bill, ONS |
Originally 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.
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Posted: October 27, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housing associations, Local government, Pay to stay, Right to buy, Social housing, Starter homes | Tags: Brandon Lewis, Housing and Planning Bill |
Originally posted on October 20 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
A few answers and yet more questions: my round-up of the latest developments on the Housing Bill.
An ex-colleague used to speak in awed tones about the time he saw an old-school football reporter compose his match report for the Football Pink as the final whistle sounded. He took a cigarette packet out of this pocket, drew lines on it in the shape of paragraphs, and then dictated a word-perfect report down the line to the copy takers.
Much has changed since the olden days: smoking in public places; laptops and the internet have replaced phones and copy takers; and Pink ‘Uns died out long ago in most cities. But looking back at the events of the past week it seems that cigarette packets remain as popular as ever for drawing up plans – and for things infinitely more complicated than football matches.
This was exactly the metaphor used by an anonymous source in Jill Sherman’s story in The Times last week that the government is set to phase in the extension of the right to buy because of concern over the costs. ‘The Treasury people are hanging their heads in despair,’ the source said. ‘How did this policy that was made up on the back of a fag packet get adopted during the election campaign?’
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Posted: October 14, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housing associations, Poverty, Right to buy, Section 106, Social housing, Starter homes | Tags: Conservatives, David Cameron, Generation Rent |
Originally posted on October 7 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Forget social housing, any kind of affordable rented housing is living on borrowed time in the wake of this year’s Conservative conference.
In his speech on Wednesday David Cameron announced ‘a national crusade to get homes built’ and go from ‘Generation Rent into Generation Buy’.
The headline policy of starter homes does not look any better than it did the first two times he announced it (in December 2014 and again when he doubled the target in March). The original policy had potential because it offered the prospect of additional homes on sites that would not have got planning permission before. Though there were potential problems, what would amount to urban exception sites looked like a good idea, especially if the uplift in land values could be captured to pay for infrastructure.
But the idea has looked worse and worse the more it has evolved. Research by Shelter has shown that even at a 20 per cent discount the homes will not be affordable in most of the country. Despite an advisory committee on design, there’s not much to stop housebuilders cutting costs by making them starter hutches rather than homes and no mechanism has been suggested so far to check that the discount really is a discount. And even if there is a deal to be had for Generation Rent some of the benefits will go to people who could have afforded to buy at the undiscounted price.
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Posted: October 6, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, Local government, Right to buy, Social housing | Tags: Conservatives, Greg Clark, National Housing Federation |
Originally posted on October 13 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
If the result of the NHF ballot was a foregone conclusion, just about everything else about the extension of the right to buy remains unclear.
With a majority of 93% by stock and 86% by membership, the NHF has a result it can present to the government as a resounding endorsement of its voluntary deal. True, it’s only 55% of those eligible to vote (or, as Joe Halewood argues, 20% of all registered providers) but that presentation is what really counts. Given the dubious nature and timing of the vote, this was always going to be the result (see my related post Deal or No Deal?).
But anyone looking for a response from Greg Clark at the Conservative conference on Monday will have come away disappointed. The communities secretary extolled the virtues of the right to buy, argued housing association tenants have the same ambitions to own as everyone else and delivered the line Tories wanted to hear: ‘We are doing what we promised, we are extending the right to buy to housing association tenants.’ But there was no explicit reference to the deal rushed through in time for the conference.
The omission may just be a demonstration of the political sensitivity involved. Early reports said Clark had watered down the manifesto pledge (something he denied, though the voluntary arrangement may result in the right to a discount rather than a right to buy for some tenants). However, it’s also a reflection of how much has still to be resolved.
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Posted: October 2, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, Local government, Right to buy, Social housing | Tags: Greg Clark, National Housing Federation |
Originally posted on September 28 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
As the clock ticks down to 5pm on Friday, what should really count in the momentous decision to be taken by housing associations?
My first thought was this is like the ‘offer he can’t refuse’ scene in The Godfather. Vote No to the ‘voluntary’ deal on the Right to Buy and you may not wake up in bed next to the head of your favourite horse but you will be inviting Osborne to do his worst in the spending review in November.
Then I thought of the BBC. Looked at in terms of narrow self-interest it seems a no brainer. Better, surely, to strike a deal on the most generous terms you can now than wait for the government to impose the same thing on much worse terms later. That’s exactly what the BBC did before the Budget when it ‘voluntarily’ swallowed the cost of free TV licenses for the over-75s in return for an increase in the license fee.
My next thought was more cynical. Isn’t the NHF a bit like the Premier League when it signed the deal with Sky that excluded the rest of football from its TV billions? Even Sky didn’t make the other clubs sell their best players to pay for it.
And then I came back to the comparison that defenders of housing associations in the House of Lords spent the Spring and early Summer making: the complaint that this is the biggest seizure of charitable assets since the dissolution of the monasteries. Except that as far as I know the monastic orders did not voluntarily agree to the seizure provided they received full compensation paid for by the forcible sale of convents.
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Posted: September 17, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Local government, Right to buy | Tags: Shelter |
Originally posted on September 17 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
As official figures further undermine the government’s credibility on the right to buy there are new doubts about the feasibility of the plan to extend it.
If ministers are to meet their pledge of one for one replacement of all homes sold, starts on site should now be rising sharply as receipts from earlier sales feed through the system. Any guesses what’s happening instead?
That’s right, the latest quarterly stats from the DCLG show that just 307 replacements were started between April and June – down 17 per cent on a year ago. The significance of this is not just the year-on-year fall itself, the first since the government ‘reinvigorated’ the right to buy with increased discounts and the replacement pledge in April 2012. Nor even that starts are down 56 per cent on the previous quarter (the end of the financial year). It’s also that this quarter marks three years since the start of the new scheme: the small print of the pledge says that replacements will be built within three years for all additional homes sold on top of those already forecast.
That in turn raises severe doubts about the government’s claim that it can fund the extension of the right to buy through the forced sale of high-value council homes. It claims this will raise enough to pay for the discounts, pay off the historic debt, replace all homes sold one for one and set up a brownfield fund. The detail has not yet been published but the plan has led to alarm even among Conservatives about the impact in London.
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Posted: September 9, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, Right to buy, Social housing | Tags: George Osborne, spending review |
Originally posted on September 9 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Another week, another George Osborne attack on housing associations – but this one comes at a crucial time.
The chancellor’s comments yesterday at the House of Lords economic affairs committee are not the shock they would have been three months ago. In the wake of his hostile joint article with David Cameron and the decisions taken in the Budget and a summer of hostile media coverage including THAT Channel 4 News report, they may be seen as par for the course.
But nobody will need reminding of what is at stake. Ahead of publication of the Housing Bill next month, discussions continue with the National Housing Federation over implementation of the extension of the right to buy. Ahead of the spending review in November, we already know the government will look to ‘refocus’ the housing budget on home ownership and who knows if there will even be a housing budget after 2018.
So the nuances of what he said yesterday matter. And it’s probably no coincidence that he made them where he did: the revolt in the Lords over charitable associations remains the biggest obstacle to extending the right to buy. You can watch here from just after 16:02 for the section on housing but here are some extracts that give some interesting indications of his thinking.
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Posted: August 17, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Private renting, Right to buy, Social housing |
Originally posted on August 17 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Can the government afford to be complacent about the rate at which right to buy homes are falling into the hands of private landlords?
Pete Apps’s freedom of information investigation for Inside Housing revealed that 38 per cent of former council houses in 91 local authorities are now rented privately. The proportion is as high as 65 per cent in places like Milton Keynes and Stevenage. This figure is for leasehold council flats but there seems no reason to think that the rate for freehold houses will be significantly different, given that many were originally sold longer ago.
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Jules Birch 