Reeves raises expectations on investment
Posted: September 26, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Energy efficiency, Housebuilding, Social housing | Tags: Angela Rayner, Labour, Rachel Reeves | Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
For the most part, this was a Labour conference of nudges and winks rather than major announcements.
That is no coincidence because major decisions across government are being left to the Budget and one-year spending review next month and the multi-year spending review to follow in the Spring.
So for all the debate at what looked like an unprecedented number of fringe meetings on housing in Liverpool, for all the promises from the conference podium of brownfield passports and help for homeless veterans and care leavers, there was comparatively little that signalled the direction the new government intends to take.
The one exception was not a surprise: the reinstatement by net zero secretary Ed Miliband of the 2030 target to bring all rented homes up to a minimum level of Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) C by 2030.
The announcement reinstates an earlier target for Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards that was scrapped by Rishi Sunak and extends it to social and private rented homes
That will have major implications given that the costs of retrofitting social housing alone far exceed Labour’s scaled-back plans for green grants and loans.
Without a boost, that could accelerate the sell-off of older private rented stock and encourage social landlords to consolidate theirs, at the same time as it focusses their attention even more on improving their existing homes rather than building new ones.
On new homes, the big question for me is the relationship between Labour’s target of 1.5 million new homes in this parliament and its manifesto promise on affordable and social housing.’
Read the rest of this entry »The trouble with targets
Posted: September 20, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning, Section 106, Social housing, Wales | Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
The trouble with targets
Housing targets concentrate minds in government and drive delivery but they also come with trade-offs attached.
As Labour gears up for its first party conference since gaining power, much of the attention will be on announcements that fill in the blanks in how it is going to achieve its manifesto target of 1.5 million new homes in this parliament.
Superficially unambitious – it’s no more than the 2019 Tory manifesto promise 300,000 of 300,000 new homes by the mid-2020s – it is actually a huge stretch, with ministers expecting no more than 200,000 net additional dwellings in this financial year as a starting point.
That will leave a growing shortfall to be made up in the later years of the parliament and could require more like 400,000 new homes a year to be built by the late 2020s.
Having a target in place is important because it drives activity within government, especially when it is backed by the rise of Labour yimbyism.
But a target does not guarantee delivery in itself, even with the magic added ingredient of planning reform.
Read the rest of this entry »The Grenfell Tower inquiry: truth, justice and change
Posted: September 11, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Fire safety, Grenfell Tower, Social housing | Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
A week after the final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry it’s time to focus on the responses so far and what happens next.
Sir Keir Starmer made a dignified statement in the Commons in which he spoke directly to the Grenfell community: ‘I want to start with an apology on behalf of the British state to each and every one of you, and indeed to all the families affected by this tragedy. It should never have happened. The country failed to discharge its most fundamental duty to protect you and your loved ones—the people we are here to serve—and I am deeply sorry.’
We’ve heard prime ministers say things like this many times over the decades, sometimes after disasters, sometimes after scandals. The difference is that Grenfell was both.
For Grenfell United, publication of the report is ‘a significant chapter in the journey to truth, justice and change. But justice has not been delivered. The inquiry report reveals that whenever there’s a clash between corporate interest and public safety, governments have done everything they can to avoid their responsibilities to keep people safe. The system isn’t broken, it was built this way.’
All disasters have an element of scandal about them too. There were basic operational failures that led to them, often compounded by a cavalier attitude to health and safety and establishment resistance to justice for the victims.
Similarly, scandals like the Post Office and infected blood were systemic failures but also disasters that cost victims their livelihoods and their lives.
Grenfell combines the two: not an accident but an entirely preventable disaster; and a scandal that does not just implicate local and central government and the entire construction industry but also raises fundamental questions about societal attitudes towards social housing and the safety of most of the blocks of flats built during this century.
Read the rest of this entry »Pulling the policy levers
Posted: August 1, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, New towns, Planning, Right to buy, Social housing | Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing
The last day of term is traditionally a time when nothing much happens and we get set for the holidays to come.
Not so much for Angela Rayner. The deputy prime minister marked the last day in parliament before the summer recess this week with a flurry of announcements, guidance and consultation.
Most of these – planning reforms including a new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), a new towns taskforce, changes to the right to buy – were foreshadowed in the election campaign and early days of the new government.
However, both her written statement and what she outlined to MPs including some intriguing hints of changes that go well beyond supply and planning.
And there was also an important piece of context: Rayner said the government now expects to deliver just 200,000 new homes in England in this financial year. That is 100,000 fewer than the annual average needed to meet its target of 1.5 million and will ramp up the pressure in the later years of this parliament.
Read the rest of this entry »How does the King’s Speech measure up?
Posted: July 18, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Leasehold, Legal, Planning, Private renting, Section 21, Social housing, Temporary accommodation | Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Amid the excitement of the first Labour King’s Speech in 15 years, it may seem churlish to inject a note of scepticism.
The excitement lies in the prospect of planning reform to deliver more homes, the potential of more devolution in England, the promise of improved rights for private renters and the hope that we could at long last see the abolition of leasehold.
Nobody should under-estimate the potential of this programme to improve the lives of millions of private renters and leaseholders or the determination of the government to use its mandate to deliver more new homes.
Yes, we already knew all of this from Labour’s manifesto but hearing them in the King’s words amid the pomp and ceremony of the state opening of parliament begins their transition from promises on a page to action in the real world.
The scepticism comes from two directions. First, and most obviously, the closer we get to implementation of these reforms the more the details matter.
The background document has some of these but more will follow once the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, English Devolution Bill, Renters’ Rights Bill and Draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill make their way through parliament over the next few months.
The second reason for scepticism is the hype that comes with it. ‘Take this paragraph from the prime minster’s introduction to the King’s Speech: ‘Too many people currently live with the threat of insecurity and injustice, and so we will make sure everyone can grow up in the secure housing they deserve. We will introduce tough new protections for renters, end no fault evictions and raise standards to make sure homes are safe for people to live in.’
The second sentence describes what the government will do for private renters. These are good but they do not come close to meeting the aspiration in the first.
A dose of high-flown rhetoric is perfectly understandable but Keir Starmer also made a point of stressing ‘patient work and serious solutions, rather than the temptation of the easy answer’.
So how does the King’s Speech measure up to that?
Read the rest of this entry »Optimism, realism and disorientation as Labour takes power
Posted: July 5, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Social housing | Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Labour’s huge election victory is undoubtedly good news for housing but will it take this once-in-a-generation chance to prove that ‘change’ is more than just a slogan?
You’ll have to have worked in housing for more than 25 years to remember the last time Labour successfully regained power in 1997.
Then, as now, the party took over after a long period in which Conservative governments got to set the parameters of the housing system on everything from tax to investment and planning to benefits.
The Blair-Brown governments made solid progress on homelessness and decent homes and eventually boosted investment in new homes but they blew the chance to change things more fundamentally.
Keir Starmer takes over at a time when housing is significantly higher up the political agenda but the economic backdrop is far bleaker.
So how should we react to Labour’s stunning victory?
Read the rest of this entry »The mixed legacy of Michael Gove
Posted: May 27, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Fire safety, Leasehold, Planning, Private renting, Social housing | Tags: Michael Gove | Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Following his surprise decision to stand down as MP, Michael Gove leaves Westminster as probably the most important politician for housing in the last 14 years of Conservative rule.
As housing secretary since September 2021 (with a brief break for Liz Truss) he was in charge for some of the most consequential legislation of the whole period: the Building Safety Act 2022; Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023; and Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024.
He also changed the terms of the debate on many issues, issuing public calls for more social housing in a way that would have been unthinkable for earlier Conservative ministers and speaking up for the rights of leaseholders, renters and tenants.
Yet for all that he remains something of an enigma. On a personal level, he was an able minister, open about Conservative failures and willing to engage with questions others would dodge, but he also bequeathed us Brexit chaos and never achieved one of the great offices of state.
The sense of two Goves carried on till the end: speaking to Rishi Sunak in the final Cabinet meeting before the election was called his message was ‘who dares wins’ but two days later it was ‘actually, not me’ as he stood down from his Surrey Heath constituency.
Read the rest of this entry »Juggling without dropping the ball
Posted: May 8, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Council housing, Decarbonisation, Fire safety, Housing associations, Housing finance, Rents, Social housing | Leave a commentOriginally written as a blog for Inside Housing.
How long can you keep juggling before it all goes horribly wrong?
That’s the question for social landlords posed by a new report from the all-party Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee on the finances and sustainability of the social housing sector.
Juggling a couple of balls is simple. Three gets easier with practice. Four needs intense focus. Add more balls and external distractions and you risk dropping the lot.
The issues that need to be juggled are familiar ones: how do you continue to build new homes, decarbonise existing ones, fix fire safety problems and regenerate older stock when there is not enough grant to go around, construction, energy and insurance costs have soared and supposedly long-term rent settlements keep being revisited?
As the report points out, we are already seeing the results. Fiona Fletcher-Smith of L&Q told the committee that under the affordable housing programme that ended in 2021 it built 10,000 new homes in London but ‘this year in this programme we are bidding for 1,000. It is a dramatic drop.’
Read the rest of this entry »Making the most of Labour’s inheritance
Posted: April 18, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing need, Planning, Section 106, Social housing | Tags: Labour | Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing
The economic inheritance of the next government will be so dire that it’s hard to avoid thinking that the prospects for housing investment will be even worse.
Take an already inadequate Affordable Homes Programme, add higher costs for construction, building safety, decarbonisation and follow the freeze on capital investment implied in current spending plans and you seem to have a recipe for housing disaster.
However, an important chapter in the latest UK Housing Review challenges that view on two important levels.
Glen Bramley builds on his longstanding work on housing need by essentially looking through the other end of the telescope at different scenarios for total completions of new homes in 2031 (ie after market conditions have recovered from the cost of living crisis etc).
His ‘low’ scenario corresponds with actual performance recently while ‘very low’ takes account of the current economic climate and recent changes in government planning policy that will reduce supply still further.
As the graph shows, under the ‘low’ scenario, there would be just 211,000 completions per year by 2031, with around 66,000 affordable homes including 35,000 for social rent. ‘Very low’ cuts those numbers by more than 20 per cent to just 164,000 overall and 50,000 affordable including 24,000 for social rent.
Judged against those numbers, the other three scenarios look a long way off, especially the promised land of ‘High-medium’ and ‘High’, which correspond with Labour’s pledge of 1.5 million new homes over five years and longstanding calls for 90,000 social rent homes a year.
Read the rest of this entry »Budget misses its ‘housing moment’
Posted: March 7, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Budget, Home ownership, Social housing, Tax | Leave a commentOriginally written as a column for Inside Housing.
It was meant to be a ‘housing moment’ that would make a home ownership-based pitch to younger voters.
That was the line briefed repeatedly to the Sunday papers in the run-up to a Budget that will probably be the last before the next election with the Conservatives 20 points behind in the opinion polls.
On new homes, chancellor Jeremy Hunt did have some minor funding announcements for specific schemes that seemed to stretch the definition of ‘levelling up’ to include Cambridge and Canary Wharf. He also boasted that ‘we are on track to deliver over one million homes in this parliament’ without mentioning the more ambitious manifesto target of 300,000 new homes a year.
The ‘moment’ was never going to be about social housing or homelessness. There was a small relaxation of the rules on using capital receipts by local authorities and a six-month extension of the Household Support Fund, but the Budget included none of the measures called for by Matt Downie of Crisis in his piece for Inside Housing last week.
Worse still, the Budget constrains the options for the spending review that will follow the election even further.
Read the rest of this entry »
Jules Birch 