Cladding questions have not gone away

Posted: April 30, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Construction industry, Fire safety | 1 Comment

Originally published on April 30 as a column for Inside Housing.

The first parliamentary questions on housing since the Coronavirus lockdown saw pleas for construction and housebuilding sites to get back to work.

But this was anything but a return to normal as a socially distanced and virtual House of Commons saw scrutiny of ministers truncated by the parliamentary timetable and technical gremlins.

Though questions about the costs of Covid-19 for local government took top billing, Tuesday afternoon’s Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) questions only underlined the fact that the top housing issue before the outbreak has not gone away.

Six short weeks ago there was some good news for victims of the cladding scandal as the Budget extended government help beyond Grenfell-style ACM cladding to cover other materials such as High Pressure Laminate (HPL).

Full details of the £1 billion fund are expected in May but there are still big questions about how it will operate.

And in the meantime the plight of residents has got worse as bills escalate for insurance premiums and for waking watches in blocks where work to replace the cladding has been halted by the lockdown. These interim measures are not covered by the fund.

Read the rest of this entry »

What help for housing?

Posted: April 23, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Coronavirus, Help to Buy, Home ownership, Housing market, Private renting, Stamp duty | 1 Comment

Originally posted on insidehousing.co.uk on April 23.

An extension of Help to Buy looks likely, a stamp duty holiday probable, but what else should the government do when the housing market eventually emerges from its Coronavirus freeze?

Vested interests are already out in force making their case and can cite the effect of a downturn on housebuilding numbers, the economy and tax receipts in their support.

And if anyone is feeling a sense of déjà vu this is of course pretty much where we were in 2008, when the housing market slumped in the wake of the credit crunch.

Read the rest of this entry »

Seeing what’s essential

Posted: April 16, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Coronavirus | 2 Comments

Originally published as a column for Inside Housing on April 16.

Week four of the Coronavirus crisis and the world is still being turned upside down.

Is it really less than a month ago that ending rough sleeping by the end of this parliament – rather in a weekend – seemed a big ask?

Or that it felt like it would take months, possibly years, of campaigning to get the government to restore Local Housing Allowance (LHA) to something like the level of rents?

Or even that it was possible to buy a flat or a house?

Long-held assumptions about the way we run our housing system have been turned on their head by the crisis.

Read the rest of this entry »

Questions that will not go away

Posted: March 31, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Social housing | Tags: | 1 Comment

Originally posted on March 31 as a blog for Inside Housing.

Some time in the long distant past (two weeks ago) we were just emerging from a Budget that signalled better times ahead for affordable housing but left a string of unanswered questions ahead of the Spending Review in the Autumn.

Nest week should have seen the launch of the UK Housing Review 2020 but it appears virtually instead this week in our newly shrunken world as a powerful reminder that other things once mattered.

As ever, it combines a wealth of authoritative statistics about housing with in-depth analysis of all tenures as well as finance, the economy, homelessness, help with housing costs and international comparisons.

What really struck me me is the picture that emerges of the state of our affordable housing and the stark contrast between England and the other UK nations that has developed over the last ten years. This is not new of course but seeing it all brought together is what really hits home.

Read the rest of this entry »

Housing in the time of Coronavirus

Posted: March 23, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Coronavirus, Homelessness, Local housing allowance, Private renting | Leave a comment

Originally posted on March 19 as a blog for Inside Housing.

It was only last week but already it seems a lifetime ago since BC – Before Coronavirus

With schools closing, London facing lockdown and, who knows, troops on the streets by the weekend, the impact on housing may seem minor by comparison.

But beyond parochial organisational concerns, the situation is critical for millions of people faced with losing their income or their job and wondering if they will lose their home too – and a matter of life and death for those living and working in care homes, extra care and sheltered housing and those who already have no home.

With the government twisting the arms of mortgage lenders to offer payment holidays, help arrived for home owners first. Now it is promising help for renters with emergency legislation to ban private and social landlords from evicting anyone for three months and no new possession proceedings to be allowed during the crisis.

Read the rest of this entry »

A strategy full of contradictions

Posted: March 17, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Permitted development, Planning, Shared ownership, Social housing | Tags: | Leave a comment

Originally posted on March 17 on my blog for Inside Housing.

What was billed as a statement about planning to follow the Budget was actually a declaration of intent about the future of housing – with some glaring contradictions at the heart of it.

An oral statement to the Commons and accompanying policy paper last Thursday from housing secretary Robert Jenrick foreshadow not just the planning and social housing white papers but also a new housing strategy that will be published alongside the Spending Review in the Autumn.

By my reckoning this will be the first housing strategy to be billed as such since David Cameron ‘radical and unashamedly ambitious’ one that pledged to ‘get Britain building’ in 2011.

Given what’s happened since, and the fact that Thursday’s press release promises exactly the same thing, that begs a few questions about what exactly the government has been doing in the meantime.

Read the rest of this entry »

Budget boost leaves housing gaps

Posted: March 16, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Council housing, Fire safety, Local housing allowance | Leave a comment

Originally published on March 11 as a blog for Inside Housing.

This is a Budget that does not live up to its own hype and has some glaring omissions but still brings some good news for housing.

There are three big positives: a £12.2bn Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) over the five years from 2021/22; an additional £1bn for a Building Safety Fund to remove dangerous cladding; and £650m to help rough sleepers into permanent accommodation.

Add the reversal of an interest rate hike for borrowing for new council homes, extra funding for housing infrastructure, £1.2bn in consequentials that other UK nations can invest in new homes and an extension of Shared Accommodation Rate exemptions to young rough sleepers and other vulnerable groups, and this looks like one of the best Budgets for housing in the last 10 years.

However, that’s not setting the bar especially high, and you don’t have to look very far below the surface before the questions start to mount up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Priorities after the reshuffle

Posted: February 20, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Fire safety, Home ownership, Homelessness, Planning, Social housing | Leave a comment

The dust has settled on the reshuffle with yet another new housing minister but more significant developments elsewhere.

The replacement of Esther McVey with Chris Pincher, the 10th housing minister to take their turn since 2010, need only detain us long enough to note the reward reaped by the former for resigning in principle from a proper Cabinet job over Brexit and the fact that the latter has lost the ‘attending Cabinet’ status that previously went with being a minister of state.

As Pete Apps noted on Thursday, the resignation of Sajid Javid is much bigger news because it dials down faint hopes that housing will gain in the Budget and Spending Review.

There was no direct evidence that this would actually happen but as a former housing secretary Javid is at least aware of the issues that need to be addressed. Rishi Sunak, the former Treasury chief secretary who steps into his shoes, is an unknown quantity.

More clues can perhaps be gleaned from the appointment of Jack Airey as Boris Johnson’s special advisor on housing and planning. As a former head of housing at Policy Exchange, we can probably expect more on the ‘building beautiful’ agenda and more support for the argument that housing problems all come back to planning.

And, at least in the short term, the most significant appointment in the reshuffle is the re-appointment of Robert Jenrick as housing secretary.

Read the rest of this entry »

Which way will Johnson jump?

Posted: February 13, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Council housing, Home ownership, Housebuilding, Planning, Rough sleeping, Social housing | Tags: | Leave a comment

Originally published on February 11 on my blog for Inside Housing.

For the moment at least all things seem possible when it comes to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives and housing.

Arguments apparently continue between those who want to shift further towards home ownership and those who see council housing as the focus for blue collar Conservatism.

The party seems to be facing in two opposite directions on new development, with some arguing for planning restrictions to be swept away while others see ‘beauty first’ as the key to winning local consent.

And these are just part of a wider battle between those who see Brexit as a chance to complete the Thatcherite revolution and those who think they must reverse some of it.

As an indication of the breadth of the possibilities, the Sunday Telegraph even reported that Johnson and chancellor Sajid Javid are considering imposing a mansion tax in the Budget.

The symbolism of taxing the well-housed in the South to spend more in the North could not be denied but would they really steal a policy from Ed Miliband’s Labour to screw their own supporters?

The first forks in the road are coming up soon with choices to be made about who will hold key ministerial positions in the reshuffle this week and what will be prioritised in the Spring Budget and in the Spending Review to follow.

In the meantime, though, what might a Boris Johnson housing policy look like?

Read the rest of this entry »

Warehousing poverty

Posted: February 6, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Permitted development, Poverty, Temporary accommodation | Tags: | 2 Comments

Monday night’s Panorama provided a shocking window on the world of temporary accommodation and permitted development – but it also made me think back to an influential think-tank report from a decade ago.

The programme centred on Templefields House, a converted office block in Harlow run by property company Caridon. It provides temporary accommodation for local authorities across the South East but, according to the programme, also has a contract with an ex-offender re-housing charity.

There is no public transport and it’s 40 minutes’ walk from the town centre and, according to residents, the building is also rife with crime, anti-social behaviour and drugs and the police have been called out 600 times in three years.

The building, the company and another converted block it runs in Harlow, Terminus House, have featured in several previous media investigations of temporary accommodation and permitted development. See here, here and here for more details.

What was new in last night’s Panorama was the level of detail from residents and revelations from an undercover reporter.

Read the rest of this entry »

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →