10 things about 2018 – part one
Posted: December 21, 2018 Filed under: Grenfell Tower, Homelessness, Regulation, Rough sleeping, Temporary accommodation, Tenants, Universal credit, Welfare reform | Tags: Dominic Raab, James Brokenshire, Kit Malthouse, Philip Alston, Sajid Javid Leave a commentOriginally published as a column for Inside Housing on December 21.
It was the year of three housing ministers and two secretaries of states (so far), the year that the department went back to being a ministry and a new government agency promised to ‘disrupt’ the housing market.
It was also the year of the social housing green paper and the end of the borrowing cap, of Sir Oliver Letwin and Lord Porter and of some significant anniversaries.
Above all, it was the year after Grenfell and the year before Brexit. Here is the first of my two-part review of what I was writing about in 2018.
1. New names, new ministers
January had barely begun when the Department for Communities and Local Government became the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. The name harked back to the glory days when housing was ‘our first social service’ and housing secretary Sajid Javid became the first full member of the cabinet with housing in his title since 1970.
The best housing books of 2018
Posted: December 17, 2018 Filed under: Council housing, Financialisation, History, Land Leave a commentOriginally published as a column for Inside Housing on December 17.
As housing has risen up the political and media agendas, so the shelves are filling with books explaining where we’ve gone wrong and what we could do to put things right.
Reflecting that, and just in time for anyone wondering what to get the housing nerd in their life for Christmas, here are my three housing books of the year.
First up is John Boughton’s indispensable history of council housing, Municipal Dreams – The Rise and Fall of Council Housing.
It’s a predictable choice and one already made by many other reviewers but it is one that is better late than never and one that will be even more worth reading next year against the background of the centenary of Homes Fit for Heroes.
More housing questions than answers
Posted: December 11, 2018 Filed under: Grenfell Tower, Land, Leasehold, Zero carbon homes | Tags: James Brokenshire Leave a commentOriginally posted on my blog for Inside Housing on December 11.
As Westminster grinds to a halt over Brexit at least some progress is still being made on housing – or is it?
In the year of the social housing green paper and the end of the borrowing cap, some things have undoubtedly moved but the signs at Housing Communities and Local Government questions on Monday were that others are grinding to a halt.
First up was the land question and specifically the way that MHCLG dashed hopes of radical reform of land value capture in its response to a Housing Communities and Local Government Committee report recommending big changes to a system that sees planning permission for housing increase the value of agricultural land by 100 times.
DWP denies it’s in denial on poverty
Posted: November 19, 2018 Filed under: Poverty, Universal credit | Tags: Philip Alston, United Nations Leave a commentOriginally posted on November 19 on my blog for Inside Housing.
With unintended irony the government has responded to a United Nations report accusing it of being ‘in denial’ about extreme poverty by denying that there is a problem.
The last time a UN official visited Britain and had the temerity to criticise government policy it sparked a furious row on the Today programme.
Ministers dismissed Raquel Rolnik, the special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, as ‘the woman from Brazil’ and ‘an absolute disgrace’ ad accused her of producing ‘a misleading Marxist diatribe’.
This time around there was no real row about ‘the man from Australia’, no formal complaint to the UN secretary-general and the Today programme ignored Professor Philip Alston, special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
Whether that reflects changed editorial priorities at the BBC, a ministerial determination not to rise to the bait or simply the way that Brexit sucks away all the oxygen from other news remains to be seen.
However, Professor Alston’s report published in London on Friday is if anything even more damning that the one produced by Ms Rolnik.
What’s in the Budget small print?
Posted: October 30, 2018 Filed under: Council housing, Help to Buy, Housebuilding, Planning, Shared ownership, Uncategorized | Tags: Budget 2018, Letwin review Leave a commentOriginally published on November 30 on my blog for Inside Housing.
If you listened to the chancellor’s speech you may have thought this was a Budget that did not mean much for housing. As ever you may think again after reading the small print.
As I live blogged for Inside Housing yesterday, the big news in the speech was the extra money for universal credit that makes up for many of the cuts imposed in universal credit and delays the roll-out yet again and sounds like it will be enough to avoid a backbench Tory rebellion.
Elsewhere, Philip Hammond found £2.8 bn to bring forward cuts in income tax allowances by a year but he failed to find roughly half that to scrap the final year of the freeze in most working age benefits including the local housing allowance.
This was a clear political choice to go for tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the better-off over benefits that go to the poorest households.
Ahead of the next spending review, numbers crunched by the Resolution Foundation overnight suggest that the squeeze on everything apart from health will continue well into the 2020s.
However, the most interesting developments for housing came in the background documents published as Mr Hammond sat down.
Six things to look out for in the Budget
Posted: October 26, 2018 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentOriginally published on October 26 on my blog for Inside Housing.
What might have been the Budget’s headline announcements on housing were made by the prime minister last month at the National Housing Summit and Conservative Party conference.
But the chancellor’s big moment will still set the context for the end of the borrowing cap for council housing from next week that ‘extra’ £2 bn for housing associations in the 2020s.
And it will also reveal the total spending envelope for the 2019 Spending Review, teeing up a race to calculate whether austerity really is as ‘over’ as Theresa May promised.
With Brexit and the NHS to pay for and crises in local government and social care as well as in housing that could be a tall order.
In the meantime, here are six areas to look out for on Monday.
- The borrowing cap
When the prime minister made her surprise announcement, the concern was that it would come with strings attached when the detail was revealed in the Budget.
That could still happen but one big fear – a long delay before implementation – has already been allayed by last week’s announcement by housing secretary James Brokenshire that the cap will be lifted from Tuesday.
However, the impact of the rent cut, the Right to Buy and welfare reform still loom large and are seen as more important than the borrowing cap by some councils.
And the suspicion remains that the Treasury is not exactly enthusiastic about a move that will increase public borrowing under current rules.
In which case, as John Perry argues, why not bring the UK into line with other countries and give council housing the same financial independence as housing associations?
And why not, as the Local Government Association (LGA) argues in its Budget submission, allow councils to reinvest 100% of Right to Buy receipts and decide discounts locally?
To signal their intent, more than 60 council leaders have signed an open letter pledging an immediate drive to build more homes. Read the rest of this entry »
Squaring the circle of regeneration
Posted: October 22, 2018 Filed under: Council housing, Housing associations, London, Regeneration, Uncategorized | Tags: Kensington and Chelsea Leave a commentOriginally posted on my blog for Inside Housing on October 22.
When England’s most high-profile local authority calls the behaviour of the country’s largest housing association ‘morally wrong’ you sit up and take notice.
Clashes between the local priorities of a council and the organisational ones of an association are nothing new of course but this week’s statement by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) seems different.
Clarion is in its sights over rejected proposals for the regeneration of the Sutton Estate in Chelsea.
Council leader Kim Taylor-Smith told a council meeting last week:
‘HAs in the borough are, in some cases turning away from their core purpose and in some cases becoming all but private developers.
‘You will all know I am talking about Clarion Housing, the owners of my local and cherished Sutton Estate which they wish to knock down the estate with a loss of affordable homes We stand shoulder to shoulder with local residents in opposing this
‘I think we all in the chamber are untied. This is wrong.’
Jules Birch 