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: March 6, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Commonhold, Leasehold |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
England and Wales have a long history of trying and failing to introduce commonhold and an even longer one of trying and failing to reform leasehold.
So this week’s white paper is a big moment, coming 60 years after Labour first pledged commonhold and 23 years after it botched its implementation.
After decades of frustration and failed attempts at reform, leaseholders will have to be patient for a little bit longer and take the housing minister at his word that this is ‘the beginning of the end for leasehold’.
While some have criticised Labour for going too slowly, the white paper highlights the flaws in previous legislation and the importance of getting things right.
So there will be both a draft Bill setting out how the existing commonhold framework will be amended and a further consultation on banning leasehold for new-build flats before all the pieces can be put into place.
Commonhold was first introduced in England and Wales in 2002 to bring them into line with what has been the default for at least 50 years in much of the rest of the developed world.
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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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Posted: February 19, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, New towns |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
After a relentless week of grim international news, it’s good to have something to celebrate on the domestic and housing front.
Until the spending review in the Spring, any assessment of the government’s overall approach to housing will have to be provisional but this week brought some hopeful signs.
First up was the announcement of an extra £300 million for the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP), plus for more temporary housing, then confirmation that this is in addition to the £500 million announced in the Budget in October.
At the time that seemed a little underwhelming given advance speculation that an extra £1 billion might be available but it now seems that some of that was held back.
True, the additional 7,800 affordable homes promised will only make up for a small part of the 50,000 to 70,000-home shortfall against what the 2021-26 AHP was originally expected to deliver, but that still represents a significant short-term boost for this year and lays down a marker for the future in the spending review.
It also recalls the last couple of years of the last Labour government, when regular announcements of extra investment added up to something more significant over time.
Next up, and more for the long term, is the announcement that more than 100 sites across England have been put forward as candidates for the next generation of new towns.
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Posted: January 24, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Bed and breakfast, Homelessness, Temporary accommodation |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Think of all the elements of the grim inheritance bequeathed to this government by the last one and perhaps the grimmest is the almost 160,000 children living, and sometimes dying, in temporary accommodation.
Homelessness minister Rushanara Ali called it ‘an absolute scandal’ in the Commons on Monday and ‘devastating’ at a Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Committee hearing on Tuesday.
One committee member spoke of meeting a constituent before Christmas who had been in ‘temporary’ accommodation for 14 years, so the entire period of Conservative-led government between 2010 and 2024.
This morning a report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) calls it ‘unacceptable’ and ‘alarming’ that almost 6,000 homeless families with children are in bed and breakfast, the worst form of temporary accommodation that is no longer the last resort the guidance says it should be.
Of those, almost 4,000 have been in B&B beyond the increasingly theoretical six-week legal limit, a figure that is 23 times higher than in 2010.
It is a scandal that comes at a huge cost for local authorities: £3.1 billion a year for homelessness services, including £2.1 billion for temporary accommodation at the latest count.
All this should be enough on its own to condemn the Tory inheritance but it is just part of a broader failure highlighted by the PAC.
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Posted: January 9, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Homelessness, Housebuilding, Social housing, Temporary accommodation |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
What’s in a target? Angela Rayner faced questions at the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee this week and gave some illuminating answers to kick off 2025.
First up was the target that is a key milestone in the government’s mission on economic growth: the manifesto promise of 1.5 million additional homes over this parliament.
The deputy prime minister faced a series of questions about whether the target is achievable and what will have to happen in later years to make up the shortfall when fewer than 300,000 a year are built in the early years.
She ran through the measures the government is taking and summed it up in an unfortunate metaphor: ‘So there are a number of levers that we’re pulling at the moment which will hopefully start to turn the tide, but it’s a bit like the Titanic, it’s not like one of the Hackney cabs that can turn really quickly. It will take more time in the early stages before we start to see the shoots.’
It’s clear what she meant but it wasn’t a good start to conjure up images of icebergs ahead. Much better was her admission that: ‘Even If I achieve and this government achieves the 1.5 million homes target, it is a dent. It is a dent in what we need to achieve as a whole country, to deliver the houses we desperately need.’
It was also good that she acknowledged concerns about development by housing associations and Section 106 while promoting initiatives to accelerate new homes and remove blockages on stalled sites. So too her emphasis on the importance of land value capture, the grey belt and the balance that has to be struck with viability.
But 300,000 new homes a year has not been achieved since the heyday of council housing so I was intrigued to see what she would say about social housing in the present day.
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Posted: December 19, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Ireland, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
What would our politics look like if housing really were the most important issue in a general election?
After a week that’s seen the Labour government set out a series of bold planning reforms in pursuit of its ambitious target of 1.5 million new homes in England in this parliament, it’s a question that may seem to be moot or unrealistic depending on your point of view.
But it does not have to be either: take even a cursory glance at what’s happening in a country close to home and you will find an election where housing really was the number one issue at the polls.
The election in Ireland may not seem to have changed very much – the government will still be led by Fine Gael (FG) and Fianna Fáil (FF) as coalition negotiations continue – but housing could be set for a transformation.
On issues ranging from social housing investment to security of tenure for private renters, those parties of the centre right are well to the left of anything that Labour is proposing in England (or Wales).
On housebuilding numbers alone the contrast is staggering. That target for England works out at 300,000 a year and is widely seen as highly ambitious not to mention unachievable.
In Ireland, FF and FG plus the Progressive Democrats and Labour, the two centre-left parties that could form part of a coalition, are all promising 50,000 to 60,000 new homes a year. Adjust for England’s population (57.1 million) compared to Ireland’s 5.3 million and you get a range of 540,000 to 650,000 per year. That’s a level that really could make a difference to affordability rather than just slowing down the rate of house price growth.
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Posted: December 6, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Housing looked like an afterthought when Labour first set out what would be its missions and first steps in government.
Five months on from the election, though it is still a means to the end of the second mission of ‘kickstarting economic growth’, the manifesto target of 1.5 million new homes in this parliament has moved centre stage as one of five milestones against which the progress of that government wants to be measured.
But Thursday’s big launch of the Plan for Change still begs some very big questions when it comes to housing.
For starters, it’s a funny kind of milestone that will only be visible after the end of the journey: we won’t know for certain whether 1.5 million homes have been delivered in this parliament until well after the next election.
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Posted: November 28, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Bed and breakfast, Homelessness, Temporary accommodation |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Another quarter, another new record in the number of homeless people and children living in temporary accommodation.
Take any measure you like and the homelessness statistics published today are beyond grim.
There are now 123,100 households in temporary accommodation including 78,420 families with 159,380 children.
All of these numbers are moving in the wrong direction, up around 5 per cent in the last three months and 15 per cent on a year ago – and all of them are the highest ever recorded in statistics that go back 20 years or more.
Within those numbers, there are 5,910 homeless families with children living in bed and breakfasts and – most shameful of all – 3,770 of them have been there beyond the six-week legal limit.
When local authorities are starting to shrug their shoulders as they break the law, pointing out plausibly that they have no other option, it must be a time for this government to act.
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Posted: November 26, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Social housing, Temporary accommodation, Tenants |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing
Few readers of Inside Housing will find the new podcast series The Trapped a comfortable listen but it is a necessary one.
You’d hope that politicians will find it an essential listen: surely few could hear its harrowing accounts of the conditions facing tenants in social housing, private renting and temporary accommodation and turn a deaf ear.
Trapped is based on the reporting of Daniel Hewitt of ITV News that began in 2021 with a story about tenants living in appalling and dangerous conditions in a tower block owned by Croydon Council.
That led to a flood of messages from tenants across the country complaining about disrepair and squalor and being ignored by their social landlord.
Among them were Kwajo Tweneboa, the ‘teenager with a Twitter account’ who held Clarion to account for appalling conditions on the Earlsfield estate in south London and became a national campaigner.
Most of the individual stories will be familiar from his TV news reports but they feel all the more powerful for being grouped together in the eight-part podcast.
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Jules Birch 