Blue skies: Part one
Posted: May 22, 2015 Filed under: Home ownership, Welfare state | Tags: Conservatives, Greg Clark, Macmillan Leave a commentIs all the talk of One Nation Conservatism just spin or is there some substance that could mean good news for housing?
In the wake of their surprise election victory, and with the opposition in disarray, senior Tories have moved to claim the centre ground: David Cameron wants ‘blue collar Conservatism’; Robert Halfon says the Tories are the true Workers Party; and it’s full steam ahead for George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse. Even Cameron’s guru Steve Hilton is back in town calling the Living Wage a ‘moral absolute’.
It’s easy to be cynical about all of this when the party ended the campaign seemingly committed to taxing less and spending more at the same time as it runs a budget surplus. As things stand, expect lots of references to cutting tax for people on the minimum wage and rather fewer to cutting their tax credits and housing benefit. Those £12 billion cuts in welfare spending, plus another £13 billion of cuts in departmental budgets are yet to be spelt out.
Good start
Posted: May 21, 2015 Filed under: Housebuilding | Tags: Brandon Lewis Leave a commentToday’s housebuilding figures for England are the best since before the election of the coalition in March 2010.
While it’s always unwise to rely on one quarter’s figures, for once it seems hard to quibble with the positive spin put on them by Brandon Lewis. The housing minister was at best creative in his use of stats before the election as good news on starts was matched by bad on completions and vice-versa. However, these particular figures, which still cover the period under the coalition, seem to spin themselves.
For the first time since the end of 2007, the January to March 2015 quarter saw more than 40,000 starts. The total was up 31 per cent on the previous quarter and 11 per cent on a year earlier and the private sector, housing associations and local authorities all recorded increase.
The day after
Posted: May 8, 2015 Filed under: Planning, Right to buy, Welfare reform | Tags: Conservative Party Leave a commentSo it turns out that the winners in the ‘the housing election’ are upmarket estate agents and housebuilders.
The soaring share prices of firms like Berkeley Homes and Foxtons this morning may be as much about Labour defeat as Conservative victory. Take the mansion tax and moves against non-doms out of the equation and prices of expensive London homes are set to go on rising along with the profits of the firms that trade in them.
The mood could hardly be more different in a housing sector facing up to an unexpected Conservative overall majority that changes all the pre-election calculations about the right to buy (it won’t happen under a coalition) and huge cuts in social security (another party will block them).
The final countdown
Posted: May 6, 2015 Filed under: Help to Buy, Housing market, Mansion tax, Planning, Right to buy | Tags: Election 2015 1 CommentIt’s been a tough job with so many to choose from but here are my 10 worst housing policies of the election campaign.
As we prepare to go to the polls, here are a few final reminders of what’s on offer:
1) We’re not going to tell you (Conservative). With extra points for repeated appearances, the Tory refusal to spell out where £12 billion of cuts in benefit spending will come from takes top spot. I first blogged about this before the short campaign began and we’ve learned little more apart from a pledge (sort of) to protect child benefit. Within hours of Iain Duncan Smith telling the BBC yesterday that ‘the work hasn’t been done yet’ on the specifics, The Guardian was publishing leaked documents with DWP proposals including increasing the bedroom tax and cutting housing benefit completely for the under-25s.
2) Exempt main homes worth to £1 million from inheritance tax (Conservative). Brilliant! A tax cut for the very well housed (aka bribe for Tory voters) that will further establish inheritance in its rightful place as the main route into home ownership.
3) Extend the right to buy to housing association tenants (Conservative). Yes, it’s true we’ve tried this before and had to drop it. Yes, forcing charities to sell their assets is a bit iffy. But trust us now we’ve found a way to pay for it: forcing councils to sell their best stock. All the homes sold will be replaced one for one, honest. What’s that you say? It doesn’t stack up? Sorry, we seem to be running out of time for questions on this one.
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Home nations
Posted: May 1, 2015 Filed under: Devolution, Northern Ireland, Right to buy, Scotland, Wales, Welfare reform Leave a commentWhoever wins the Westminster election on May 7, more devolution looks inevitable. What will it mean for housing?
The impact is obvious in Wales, where major legislation on homelessness came into force this week, and Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England, momentum is building.
I spent most of this week at TAI 2015, the CIH Cymru conference in Cardiff. The final day saw a debate on the proposition ‘If you could only vote once in the next 18 months which election would you vote in: the General Election 2015 or the Welsh Government election 2016?’ On my count, the Westminster election won – but not by much.
And the closing speech by communities and tackling poverty minister Lesley Griffiths made clear just how much Wales is going its own way. ‘We believe in social housing,’ she told the conference, ‘and I firmly believe right to buy and right to acquire should end.’
The rebel and the ponytail
Posted: April 30, 2015 Filed under: Cornwall 2 CommentsWhen David Cameron and Nick Clegg are in town on two successive days you know that the election campaign is serious.
The battle for St Ives, the most southerly constituency in Britain stretching round from the Lizard to Land’s End and then out to the Isles of Scilly, is very close. And it is part of a wider struggle in Cornwall and the South West between the two coalition partners (though Labour does have seats in Exeter and Plymouth and hopes of more) that could have a big impact on the result next week. It’s one of the 23 seats the Tories need to win for an overall majority and one the Lib Dems must hold if they are to have a hope of influence in the next parliament.
St Ives is one of three Lib Dem seats in Cornwall, and 14 in the wider South West, that could be vulnerable. The Western Morning News reported on Wednesday that the Tories are now even targeting Yeovil (held by David Laws but former constituency of Paddy Ashdown) in a sign of rising confidence in the blue camp.
The B word
Posted: April 23, 2015 Filed under: Affordable housing, Economics Leave a commentHere’s a number that should embolden whoever wins the election: 54% of voters support government borrowing to fund more affordable homes.
A MORI opinion poll for the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) found that just 21% would oppose borrowing to fund affordable housing for sale or rent and 24% neither support not oppose it. Support was unsurprisingly strongest among renters (60 per cent) and Londoners (66 per cent).
The results are in line with a series of other recent polls showing a significant shift in public attitudes to housebuilding. However, the election campaign seems so fixed that it’s difficult to imagine any of the major parties trying to win majority support by advocating a policy that actually has it. It would simply play into the Conservative narrative that it was not the banks but the last Labour government that caused the economic crisis by borrowing too much.
Housing at the hustings
Posted: April 21, 2015 Filed under: Affordable housing, Bedroom tax, Cornwall, Housing benefit, Second homes Leave a commentSo is housing finally cutting through as an issue at this election? Yesterday has convinced me that it is.
The day started with housing featuring as the election issue of the day on Today on Radio 4 – good news in itself but just an indication of the programme’s agenda. The report by John Humphrys was about Shepherd’s Bush and how it’s changed from the setting for Steptoe & Son to a place where a couple on a joint income of over £100,000 cannot afford a deposit, let alone a home, and foreign investors are buying new apartments eight at a time.
An interview with Brandon Lewis and Emma Reynolds followed (listen again here at about 8.30). But it quickly degenerated into bald men squabbling over a comb mode as they traded statistics about who has the worst record in government. Lewis trotted out the usual lines about Help to Buy while Reynolds repeated her better ones about Lyons. Maybe I’ve heard it too many times before, maybe they’ve said the same thing too many times before, but it hardly seemed like housing was at the centre of the election. Depressingly, the focus was entirely on first-time buyers. They do face huge problems but this is an indication I think that the main parties still see home ownership as the issue on which elections are won and lost. It’s a sense of aspiration, rather than housing as such, that is the real issue.
That was enough to lower my expectations for my local hustings. BBC Cornwall is organising them across the county and last night it was the turn of St Ives. The Lib Dems held off the Conservatives by just 1,700 votes in 2010 and it’s one of the 23 seats the Tories need to win to form an overall majority.
