Who is doing ‘an effing good job’?

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

The thing that struck me after Gillian Keegan’s hot mic moment is that virtually any other Conservative cabinet minister could clam the same thing.

Ok it may be stretching it a bit to say that Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt et al are doing ‘an effing good job’ but they could quite reasonably say that ‘everyone else has sat on their arse’ (even if we might debate the use of ‘else’).

Schools with crumbling reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) have inevitably become a metaphor for the state of the country and the government’s attitude to public investment, chiming perfectly with Keir Starmer’s attack lines about ‘sticking plaster politics’ and ‘cowboy builders’.

But think for a minute about housing and Michael Gove could reasonably claim to have done more than all his predecessors to tackle a building safety crisis even more serious RAAC and more to restore the legitimacy of social housing even as he promises long-delayed reforms of leasehold and private renting.

Whether that amounts to an ‘effing good job’ very much remains to be seen: the building safety crisis continues for those left outside Gove’s settlement and his commitments on the other three areas are mostly rhetorical rather than actual.

In the meantime, councils are going bankrupt and housing associations are cutting their development programmes. Housebuilding in general is falling: while ministers continues to proclaim the government’s target of 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s, they have surrendered to the Tory backbenchers on planning and there is no chance of hitting it.

All this as homelessness is rising, temporary accommodation is at record levels, a crisis in refugee housing is developing and RACC could yet prove to be a problem in housing.