Posted: November 27, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Benefit cap, Budget, Housebuilding, Local housing allowance, Rents |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Even if it had not been leaked in advance, this Budget could have been defined as much by what was not in it as what was.
The astonishing mistake made by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in uploading a report containing all the key measures before chancellor Rachel Reeves had started speaking came after weeks of well-sourced stories about them.
We already knew the headline measures: the abolition of the two-child limit; a council tax surcharge on high-value homes; and freezing income tax thresholds.
They were joined on the day by a private landlord tax (higher rates of income tax on income from property), confirmation of more money for the Warm Homes Plan and a welcome move to tackle the ‘benefit trap’ facing tenants in supported and temporary accommodation.
But the Budget delayed one of the decisions most eagerly awaited by social landlords: they will now have to wait until January for the government’s final decision on rent convergence, in effect how quickly they can increase their lowest rents above the CPI plus 1 per cent limit.
Three months on from the consultation closing, the Budget background document explains that: ‘While the government remains committed to implementing social rent convergence, it is important to take the time to get the precise details right, taking account of the benefits to the supply and quality of social and affordable housing, the impact on rent payers and affordability.’
And there was no mention at all of the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) freeze, perhaps the housing issue raised by more organisations than anything else in the run-up to the Budget.
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Posted: September 8, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Home ownership, Housebuilding, Social housing | Tags: Angela Rayner, Steve Reed |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Angela Rayner is a huge loss for the Labour government and the country but arguably an even bigger loss for housing.
The housing secretary had to go after the standards advisor ruled that she breached the ministerial code by underpaying the stamp duty on her new flat, even if the breach seems inadvertent and minor by comparison with previous tax errors by ministers.
Keir Starmer has lost someone who, after a difficult start, became a key partner on the left of the Labour Party as deputy leader and deputy prime minister.
Much like John Prescott in the early days of the Tony Blair government, her presence reassured Labour supporters that despite its modernising rhetoric the government had the interests of working people at heart.
Housing has lost a powerful voice at the top of government, someone who was in charge long enough to secure a favourable settlement in the spending review (even if it did not quite live up to her hype).
Would MHCLG have achieved as much without her? Housing might still have been a relative priority but probably not, I’d say.
Supporters of social and council housing – and those who need it – have lost an ally who knew its value from her own experience.
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Posted: July 4, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Fire safety, Homelessness, Leasehold, Planning, Private renting, Social housing, Welfare reform |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
A year into the Labour government how should we assess its record on housing?
It’s not hard to find reasons to celebrate, from the spending review announcement of £39 billion for the Affordable Homes Programme to the creation of a National Housing Bank within Homes England armed with an extra £16 billion in financial transactions capital.
Social rent is the priority after years when it was under threat of extinction and will account for 60 per cent of the renamed Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP).
Social landlords have got what they asked for on rents and the long-term plan for social and affordable housing sets out how they must improve their existing homes, professionalise their staff and give tenants more access to information.
The prospect of new financial flexibilities for local authorities and restrictions on the Right to Buy offer council housing its best opportunity in years to escape the straitjacket imposed by central government.
But there are still many gaps to be filled when Labour sets out its wider plans in a long-term housing strategy and publishes its homelessness strategy.
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Posted: July 2, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Council housing, Rents, Right to buy, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
The spending review may have given us the headlines but a flurry of announcements on Wednesday fills in much of the detail about what the government is calling ‘a decade of renewal for social and affordable housing’.
On new homes, a key question was how the £39 billion will be spent over the next 10 years and, in particular, what the trade-off will be between maximising total output of affordable homes and giving greater priority to social rent.
That got an answer in an overnight press release: a renamed Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP) is forecast to deliver 300,000 homes over the ten years (30,000 a year), of which at least 180,000 (18,000 a year or 60 per cent) will be for social rent.
To put this in perspective, the current AHP was originally meant to produce 180,000 affordable homes over the five years from 2021 to 2026 (36,000 a year) but rising construction costs cut that to between 110,000 and 130,000 (22,000 to 26,000 a year. Of those, just 40,000 (8,000 a year) are forecast to be for social rent.
Importantly, strategic partnerships will be able to bid for funds over the lifetime of the programme, which should give at least some protection from the risk of cuts if a government more hostile to housing wins the next election.
Another trade-off is the split between London, where higher land prices and construction costs mean more grant per home is needed, and the rest of the country.
Under the current AHP, the Greater London Authority (GLA) got £4.1 billion (36 per cent) and Homes England £7.4 billion (64 per cent) of the grant available.
Under SAHP, the GLA’s share will be cut to 30 per cent or up to £11.7 billion. It’s hard to reconcile that with the fact that more than half of the 126,000 homeless households stuck in temporary accommodation waiting for a social home are from London.
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Posted: June 12, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Fire safety, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Rents, Social housing | Tags: spending review |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
This spending review represents a good start on housing – but it must only be a start.
Highlights of the package delivered by chancellor Rachael Reeves on Wednesday included £39 billion over 10 years for the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) and a 10-year rent settlement of CPI plus 1 per cent for social landlords.
Then add a consultation on the return of rent convergence, £1 billon extra for cladding remediation and equal access to government funds, £2.5 billon in low-interest loans plus for social landlords.
Stir and combine with £950 million for councils to increase the supply of temporary accommodation, £10 billion in financial transactions to boost private investment and more to come for infrastructure and land remediation in Cambridge and the new towns, and this looks like great work by deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).
But does the spending review really justify the headlines and is it really as ‘transformative’ as some in the sector are making out?
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Posted: June 3, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Decarbonisation, Help to Buy, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Rents | Tags: spending review |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
With a week to go until the most consequential spending review for ten years, the Treasury is facing desperate last-ditch lobbying from departments that have yet to agree their settlement.
Last week’s public intervention by chief constables warning that the government will fail to meet its pledges on crime unless they get more cash is sign enough of that.
So too the leaked memo from deputy prime minister Angela Rayner setting out options for higher taxes that was inevitably followed by more leaks about her spending priorities.
As of this week, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) was said to be one of the departments yet to agree a settlement, alongside the Home Office, with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero just finalising one..
By contrast with previous spending reviews, housing starts with the advantage of having a politically powerful secretary of state in charge – and Angela Rayner has repeatedly promised ‘the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation’.
But the ‘biggest boost’ can mean many different things, some of them genuine, some of them not remotely up to the challenge of the moment.
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Posted: May 1, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Home ownership, Inequality, Social housing, Tax |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Housing seems such a natural engine of inequality that it’s easy to forget that the opposite was once true.
For most of the 20th century housing was the force that made society more equal. Council housing and rent control improved standards, made homes more affordable and tackled exploitation of tenants by private landlords.
Owner-occupation expanded -perhaps 10 per cent of the population owned their own home in 1914 but that proportion expanded to a third by 1939, half by the start of the 1970s and two-thirds by the mid-1980s – while the proportion of homes rented from a private landlords fell from almost 90 per cent in 1918 to less than 10 per cent by the early 1990s.
And then things went into reverse. A fascinating chapter by Susan Smith in this year’s UK Housing Review explores how this happened and what can be done about it.
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Posted: March 19, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
What’s not to like about the prospect of ‘the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation’?
The promise often repeated by Angela Rayner is the best evidence yet that the Labour government’s ambitions for housing are about more than just its headline pledge of 1.5 million new homes in this parliament.
‘The biggest boost’ certainly sounds impressive, generational even, but (unless I’ve missed it) I have not seen an explanation of what it actually means. The answer – inevitably – is that it depends.
Does the deputy prime minister mean the biggest boost in investment or the biggest boost in the number of social and affordable homes? They are not quite the same thing – and there are other questions that flow from that.
In a similar vein, how does this relate to Labour’s broader target of 1.5 million additional homes over this parliament?
The government has sometimes given the impression that if the target be met (a very big if) then a big increase in affordable housing will inevitably flow from that via Section 106.
But all the evidence suggests that this is the wrong way around and that it can only hope to come close to 1.5 million homes if a significant proportion of them are affordable.
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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: February 27, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Bed and breakfast, Homelessness, Social housing, Temporary accommodation |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
No more sticking plaster politics was the promise from Labour at the general election seven months ago.
The 126,000 homeless families and 164,000 children living in temporary accommodation in England (according to the latest statistics published on Thursday) would surely agree that is way past time for short-term fixes.
Legally entitled to permanent social housing, they can instead be stuck in temporary homes for years, frequently miles away from work, friends and family, often in bed and breakfasts (B&Bs) and sometimes living in conditions that contribute to the deaths of their children.
Local authorities facing soaring costs for the most insecure housing that have pushed some to the brink of bankruptcy would also quickly agree.
And so did homelessness minister Rushanara Ali as she told a summit on ending homelessness organised by Crisis on Tuesday: ‘We must address this crisis and deliver long-term solutions’.
But until the spending review in the Spring and homelessness strategy to follow we will have to be satisfied with announcements like last week’s extra £300 million for affordable homes plus this week’s extra £30 million in emergency homelessness funding and pledge to extend Awaab’s Law to temporary accommodation.
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Jules Birch 