Another new minister steps through housing’s revolving door

Posted: June 15, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Originally posted on June 15 on my blog for Inside Housing.

Theresa May said it herself. Twice. Polling since the election signals it. Housing matters.

Except that it doesn’t really. The delay in naming Alok Sharma as the sixth housing minister in seven years and the 15th in this century said it all.

As John Healey tweeted on Monday, if Labour had won, it would already have started creating a new housing department with a minister of cabinet rank.

Instead we are left with Sajid Javid still at the DCLG despite the apparent determination of Theresa May’s team to move him and a new man taking his Buggins’ turn in the housing job.

And in place of Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, the joint chiefs of staff to Theresa May who took the rap for the disastrous Tory campaign and manifesto, we have the ex-housing minister and (thanks to those three) ex-MP Gavin Barwell.

Read the rest of this entry »

Advertisement

Time for the Tories to listen on housing

Posted: June 9, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Private renting, Social housing | Tags: | Leave a comment

Originally published on June 9 on my blog for Inside Housing.

Wow. What a night. I was expecting what I thought would be the worst possible result for housing: the Conservatives winning with a big majority but with the best Tory housing minister in 25 years losing his seat.

Instead I turned out to be right about Gavin Barwell being defeated in Croydon Central but wrong about virtually everything else. Theresa May fought the worst Tory campaign in decades while Jeremy Corbyn surprised all of his critics (including me) and the result is a hung parliament.

But just as Labour won but still lost, so the Conservatives lost but still won. For now at least Theresa May will stay as prime minister of a government dependent on support from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). (A couple of days after this blog was written Barwell became May’s new chief of staff).

Read the rest of this entry »

The election, housing and poverty

Posted: June 6, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Housing benefit, Poverty, Social housing | Tags: | Leave a comment

Originally published on June 6 on my blog for Inside Housing.

What will the main political parties do to improve the housing system for the poorest people?

The answer ranges from something to not much at all, according to a study of their manifestos launched by a group of experts this week.

Academics Stand Against Poverty conducted a poverty audit of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat plans on their policies on everything from disability to international development and education to health. Each of these was marked out of five, with 5 representing very high confidence that the policies on offer would tackle poverty and 1 very low confidence.

As the graphic shows, Labour came out best overall with an average score of 3.6, including 5 for its plans for disability and 4 for other areas including health, education and social security.

The Lib Dems came a close second with 3.2, matching Labour on education and ranked as the best party on the environment and sustainability.

The Conservatives scored worst on every topic, with no individual mark higher than 2 and an overall mark of 1.5.

That represents a significant improvement for Labour on its score in 2015, when more parties were assessed. Back then the Greens led the way with 3.9, followed by the Lib Dems with 3.2, Labour in third with 2.6, the Conservatives in fourth on 1.7 and UKIP trailing in last with 1.4.

Looking at housing specifically in the 2017 audit, Labour leads with 3, followed by the Lib Dems with 2 and the Tories with 1. That mostly applies to England given that housing policy is largely devolved but the combined score of 6 out of 15 is the lowest for the 11 different policy areas assessed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Housing in the Labour manifesto

Posted: May 16, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Social housing | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Originally posted on May 16 on my blog for Inside Housing. 

Anyone caught up in the narrative about Labour’s radical manifesto will be left disappointed and a little bit puzzled by the party’s proposals on housing.

They will not be surprised given last week’s leak of the draft but they will find a sensible and pragmatic set of policies that move closer to what is desperately needed to tackle the housing crisis and are actually open to criticism for being too timid.

To give one example, the 2017 manifesto is routinely compared in the media to 1983’s ‘longest suicide note in history’.

But where Michael Foot’s Labour proposed a publicly-owned housebuilder and nationalisation of key parts of the building materials industry, Jeremy Corbyn’s party wants to extend Help to Buy for another seven years.

The equity loan part of the scheme is currently due to end in 2020 but Labour would guarantee funding until 2027 ‘to give long-term certainty to both first-time buyers and the housebuilding industry’.

That goes well beyond necessary action to avoid a cliff edge and abrupt fall in output after 2020.

It should be cause for celebration in the boardrooms of the big housebuilders because Help to Buy would continue to underpin their completions, profit margins, dividends and share options.

Or at least it might be if housebuilder executives were not also going to be hit personally by tax increases on higher earners and corporately by an excessive pay levy on employees paid over £500,000 a year.

But it’s still a surprising move from Labour. As Theresa May found out yesterday, Help to Buy is by no means universally popular and critics argue that too many of the benefits go to the big firms, their shareholders and people who can afford to buy anyway.

Whether you agree or disagree with it, extending Help to Buy until 2027 is evidence that on housing Labour’s approach would be pragmatic rather than ideological.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Conservative manifesto plan for council housing

Posted: May 14, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Council housing, Right to buy | Tags: | Leave a comment

The Tory ‘council house revolution’ trailed in all today’s papers begs all sorts of questions that I’ll be blogging about soon (now up here).

In TV interviews today we’ve learned that there is no new money, just the £1.4bn for affordable housing promised in the 2016 Autumn Statement.

Conservative spokespeople refused to say how many homes were involved but the Autumn Statement said 40,000.

If that is welcome news it hardly qualifies as a ‘revolution’. However, the policy includes other details that could prove to be more significant in the longer term.

Given that all today’s reports are based on a Conservative Party press release that I can’t find anywhere online, here it is:

Read the rest of this entry »

A look ahead to the manifestos

Posted: May 11, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Home ownership, Private renting, Tax | Tags: | Leave a comment

Originally posted on May 11 on my blog for Inside Housing.

As we await the manifestos, what are the chances of real change in housing over the next five years?

Give or take the odd leak, there are some positive signs. First, this election has one of the two major parties pinning its election hopes on housing reform and members of the other saying that ‘building more homes‘ is a bigger priority than it has been for years.

Second, a clutch of select committee reports, which were published just before parliament shut down for the election, set down some useful all-party markers for future policy.

Third, in Gavin Barwell and John Healey the two main parties have their best housing spokespeople in years. That may be damning them with faint praise but both seem to be politicians who get the case for housing.

Read the rest of this entry »