10 things about 2017: part two
Posted: December 28, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Home ownership, Right to buy, Social housing, Tax | Leave a commentOriginally published as a column for Inside Housing on December 27.
This second part of my look back at the year in housing starts with the return of the S word and asks how much has really changed. Part one is here.
6) The year of social housing?
The Grenfell fire intensified a debate about the future of social housing that was already underway.
Under David Cameron and George Osborne, the government had relentlessly boosted the right to buy and pursue ‘affordable’ rather than the social housing they saw as a breeding ground for Labour voters.
The year began with an announcement of first wave of part of their legacy, the starter homes that critics warned would displace other affordable homes.
However, the tide was turning against that type of politics. Away from Westminster, protests about estate regeneration (and loss of social housing) had spawned Dispossession, a documentary shown in cinemas across the country.
But the impact was evident inside the village too. When Theresa May called a snap election her manifesto featured plans for ‘a new generation of social housing’. The reality has never quite matched the rhetoric but to hear a Conservative prime minister mention the S word was a change in itself.
10 things about 2017: part one
Posted: December 22, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Grenfell Tower, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Housing benefit, LHA cap, Temporary accommodation | Leave a commentOriginally posted as a column for Inside Housing on December 22.
As in 2016, it seemed like nothing would ever be the same again after a momentous event halfway through the year.
The horrific Grenfell Tower fire on June 14 means that the headline on this column should really have read ‘nine other things about 2017’. Just as the Brexit voted has changed everything in politics, so it is almost impossible to see anything in housing except through the prism of that awful night.
That said, 2017 was another year of momentous change for housing, one that brought a few signs of hope too. Here’s the first of my two-part review of what I was writing about.
A damning verdict on the building regulations and fire safety
Posted: December 18, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Construction industry, Grenfell Tower, Social housing | Leave a commentOriginally published as a column for Inside Housing on December 18.
Six months on from the disaster that changed everything it sometimes feels like not much has changed.
Despite the promises made in the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell fire, progress has been painfully slow on rehousing families from the tower and surrounding block.
The police will not complete a full forensic assessment and reconstruction of how the fire spread before autumn 2018 and potential suspects in the criminal investigation will not be interviewed until after that.
Interim findings from the public inquiry were originally due by Easter 2018 but the judge leading it says the scale of the work that is required means that will not now be possible. No date has been set for the final report.
With up to 2,400 witnesses to be interviewed, 31 million documents to be examined and 383 companies identified as having played some role in the refurbishment of the tower, it’s not hard to find good reasons why things are taking so long.
Establishing the causes of the fire to stop the same thing happening again will be complicated enough but that is just part of getting justice for the victims and survivors.
Finding who was to blame will take time and all the while questions will remain about building safety elsewhere.
Tangible progress towards finding some of the answers comes with today’s publication of the interim findings of the Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety chaired by Dame Judith Hackitt.
Over-egging the pudding
Posted: December 15, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Homelessness, Housebuilding, Social housing | Leave a commentOriginally posted as a column for Inside Housing on December 14.
Is a year that has seen a huge shift in the politics of housing ending with a return to business as usual?
The Grenfell fire is the obvious reason for the change in the terms of the housing debate but it is not the only one.
The prime minister’s party conference speech will be remembered for the prankster, the lost voice and the collapsing stage set but it did seem to mark the culmination of a shift from Help to Buy to help for all tenures. But just as her country is not quite working for everyone, so her social housing revolution may not be quite what it seems.
One clue, I think, lies in the way that parliamentary debate has returned to the bad old days of Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps in terms of the selective use of statistics. The first time I noticed this was at last week’s Communities and Local Government questions.
Alok Sharma seems a nice chap and has quietly impressed with his willingness to listen to tenants at consultations ahead of the social housing green paper. But asked about homes built for social rent last week, he boasted that: ‘Since 2010, nearly 128,000 homes for social rent have been built in England, and 118,000 have been built for affordable rent.’
That’s an answer that does not quite compute at first but check the statistics and he is perfectly correct – and totally misleading – at the same time.
A look ahead to the Budget part two: investment
Posted: November 15, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Budget, Council housing, Social housing | Leave a commentOriginally published as a column for Inside Housing on November 15.
In normal times, a chancellor who pledged an extra £2bn for social housing and an extra £10bn for home ownership might to be greeted with general acclaim.
But these are not normal times and the pressure to do something big and bold on housing was such that what might have been two key Budget commitments (plus the new rent formula as a third) were announced last month at the party conference.
And, far from being applauded, the government came under fire for doing too little, too late on social housing and for pouring petrol on the flames of house price inflation via Help to Buy.
Philip Hammond was not helped by a curious Conservative briefing to journalists that the £2bn would only be enough for 25,000 homes but even Tory newspapers were checking housebuilder share prices on the day after the budget for Help to Buy was doubled.
This second part of my blog previewing a watershed Budget for housing looks at the prospects for further moves on investment on November 22. Part three (coming soon) will look at tax and welfare.
A massive relief to social landlords and tenants, but what now?
Posted: October 26, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, LHA cap, Local housing allowance, Social housing, Supported housing, Wales | 3 CommentsOriginally posted as a column for Inside Housing on October 26.
So finally even the prime minister accepts that plans to impose a local housing allowance (LHA) cap on supported and social housing are unworkable.
Theresa May’s announcement at prime minister’s questions that the cap will not be implemented represents a massive u-turn that will be an equally massive relief to social landlords and tenants.
Statements from a succession of different ministers over the last few weeks had signalled the move for supported housing in the face of overwhelming evidence of postponed investment and knock-on costs for the health and social care sectors.
The decision to scrap it for social housing too was more of a surprise, though it may have been influenced by the difficulty of distinguishing social from supported homes.
Starting with the evidence
Posted: October 20, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Homelessness, Housing market, LHA cap, Social housing, Universal credit | Tags: CaCHE | Leave a commentOriginally posted as a column for Inside Housing on October 20.
Almost everyone agrees there is a housing crisis, that the housing market is broken and dysfunctional and that urgent action is required – but why and what exactly should be done about it?
For most of the last seven years, the answers to these questions seem to been scribbled on the back of a fag packet at Policy Exchange or emerged fully-formed from the brilliant mind of Iain Duncan Smith.
Any idea of evidence-based policy disappeared after 2010, with evaluations of policy published only reluctantly and ignored when their conclusions are inconvenient.
That has begun to change under Theresa May, who became prime minister with a reputation for taking her time over decisions and insisting on looking at the evidence for herself before she took them.
With the Conservatives apparently prepared to consider some ideas that were previously off limits, and even to fund social rent once again, the political consensus about the need to do something about housing is growing.
So the timing could hardly be better for a new initiative dedicated to supplying the evidence to help diagnose the problems with the housing system and come up with solutions.
The turn of the screw
Posted: October 13, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, LHA cap, Social housing, Supported housing | Leave a commentOriginally published as a column for Inside Housing on October 13.
As universal credit understandably took all the headlines, the scale of the threat posed by restrictions on the local housing allowance (LHA) has come into even sharper focus.
The mood music this week suggested that ministers are set to make concessions over their plans to apply LHA caps to supported housing but the rest of social housing is still right in the firing line.
In a packed Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday and at the Communities and Local Government committee, ministers gave strong hints of flexibility to come.
The debate was called by Tory MP Peter Aldous, who called on the government to give ‘full sand serious consideration’ to recommendations made by two select committees for a supported housing allowance rather than LHA plus local top-ups.
Communities minister Marcus Jones said:
‘This matter is a priority for the Government, and we will announce the next steps shortly—later this autumn. I believe that when those proposals are introduced, they will show that we have listened and have understood the important issues at hand and the important situation. What is at stake is helping and supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our society.’
It remains to be seen exactly how much ministers have listened and understood about a system that would create a postcode lottery and has already halted development plans.
But at stake too is the government’s attempt to impose a flawed system originally designed to reflect private rents to control a very different combination of rent and care costs in supported and social housing.
May dedicates her premiership to fixing housing
Posted: October 4, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Help to Buy, Home ownership, Social housing | Tags: Conservatives, Sajid Javid, Theresa May | Leave a commentOriginally posted as a column for Inside Housing on October 4.
You wait a lifetime for a prime minister to make housing their priority and then she gets her P45 while losing her voice with the conference set falling apart behind her.
With all that happening around her it was easy to ignore the substance of Theresa May’s speech.
You may have missed it between coughs but for the first time since the 1950s here was a prime minister promising to put housing at the heart of their premiership.
And here was a Conservative prime minister not just promising an extra £2bn for ‘affordable’ housing but even allowing bids for social rent too.
But as the letters slowly dropped off the conference slogan about ‘BUILDING A COUNTRY THAT WORKS FOR EVERYONE’ you wondered how long she will have a premiership to put anything at the heart of.
And even then it is hard to avoid drawing the obvious conclusions from the comparison between an extra £2bn for affordable housing and an extra £10bn for Help to Buy.
Ten years after
Posted: September 29, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Blogging, Grenfell Tower, Mortgages, Social housing | Leave a commentOriginally posted as a column for Inside Housing on September 28.
When I started blogging for Inside Housing in September 2007 I wondered if I’d find enough to write about.
As it turned out there was no need to worry. A week before my first post Northern Rock went bust and the world changed.
What began in the United States as a sub-prime mortgage crisis was transformed by a series of financial acronyms into a Global Financial Crisis.
The connections to housing in this country at first seemed indirect: the UK did not have sub-prime lending on anything like the same scale; we had Northern Rock but there were plenty of other lenders; and the problems at Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns seemed a long way away.
The direct effects didn’t take long to make themselves felt as credit markets dried up, share prices crashed and politicians panicked at the prospect of cash machines running out of money.
At the time it seemed like we were set for a repeat of the housing market crash of the early 1990s with soaring mortgage arrears and repossessions and families plummeting into negative equity.
One or more of the major housebuilders looked certain to go bust. And the combination of the two would send the banks even further under.
Jules Birch 