Reeves raises expectations on investment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

For the most part, this was a Labour conference of nudges and winks rather than major announcements.

That is no coincidence because major decisions across government are being left to the Budget and one-year spending review next month and the multi-year spending review to follow in the Spring.  

So for all the debate at what looked like an unprecedented number of fringe meetings on housing in Liverpool, for all the promises from the conference podium of brownfield passports and help for homeless veterans and care leavers, there was comparatively little that signalled the direction the new government intends to take. 

The one exception was not a surprise: the reinstatement by net zero secretary Ed Miliband of the 2030 target to bring all rented homes up to a minimum level of Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) C by 2030.

The announcement reinstates an earlier target for Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards that was scrapped by Rishi Sunak and extends it to social and private rented homes

That will have major implications given that the costs of retrofitting social housing alone far exceed Labour’s scaled-back plans for green grants and loans.

Without a boost, that could accelerate the sell-off of older private rented stock and encourage social landlords to consolidate theirs, at the same time as it focusses their attention even more on improving their existing homes rather than building new ones.

On new homes, the big question for me is the relationship between Labour’s target of 1.5 million new homes in this parliament and its manifesto promise on affordable and social housing.’