Social Housing Weekly - 17 June 2024

A word from us

Pollsters, journalists and even politicians seem to think the election result is now a foregone conclusion. Here at LCA as ever we are a little more circumspect and prefer to look for the devil in the detail. With party manifestos released last week our best minds have been reading, analysing and reporting on the housing policies from Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems.

How much of this is new, how much of this will happen and how much of these policies will work for people and the sector at large? We can’t predict the future but there is a tonne of detailed information below so please read on. 

For more news and views on the election, follow our blog series to read analysis from our expert team, from the salient to the satirical. Also, ensure you have signed up to our flagship newsletter LDN - London in short for all the news affecting London.

Jesse Peacock

LCA Associate Director

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Policy watch

Is this it? -  housing policy announcements compared by Peter Lord

The manifestos for all the main parties were published last week, with virtually no new policy announcements included in any of them. The extent of advanced policy announcements has been such that the actual publication of manifestos was something of  non-event. Read Robert Gordon-Clark's excellent analysis of this phenomenon in last week's LDN - London in Short.

Lib Dems enter the fray with shopping list of housing policies

We will spare our dear readers an in-depth breakdown of Lib Dem housing policies. Nonetheless, the party's manifesto, published last week, includes pledges to deliver 380,000 homes in new garden cities and community-led developments, powers to end Right to Buy, as well as the abolition of residential leaseholds and Section 21 no-fault evictions. As always, the Lib Dem manifesto can be best viewed as a shopping list of policies it would wish to see picked up by Labour or the Conservatives and these policy pledges are calculated to attract support from both moderate Tories (leasehold and renters reform) as well as the left (ending Right to Buy).

Muted welcome for underwhelming Labour announcements

The Financial Times has published a feature on Labour’s pledges on planning reform and housing delivery. The report cites cautious enthusiasm from the development sector for Labour’s planning policies, but suggests that more ‘realistic’ goals would be needed to break the ‘paralysis’ in the sector. Some built environment sector leaders have responded warmly to Labour’s manifesto pledges on housing and planning, with CEO of the British Property Federation, Melanie Leech, claiming ‘Labour is right to focus on improving the planning system as the key enabler of growth’ while strategic planning reforms will ‘allow us to deliver more homes against a clear target.’

Unimaginative Tory proposals fail to wow the sector

The Conservative manifesto saw new housing policy announcements in the form of a £1bn Help to Buy style scheme, as well as the abolition of stamp duty for first-time buyers purchasing properties worth up to £425,000. The new Help to Buy-style scheme would back first-time buyers to purchase homes worth less than £400,000 with a 5% deposit. The housing sector has responded to the party’s  pledges on housing, broadly welcoming policies but labelling them as ‘frustrating’ and ‘devoid of imagination’.

'Good idea but ultimately meaningless'

Martyn Gerrard Estate Agents said introducing a new Help to Buy scheme is a ‘good idea’ but ‘ultimately meaningless if there are no homes to buy,’ adding that scrapping of first-time buyer stamp duty in properties valued up to £425,000 ‘doesn’t go far enough’,

Housing in the headlines

Rayner to set up a new unit to tackle rough sleeping

Shadow Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner is to establish a new civil service unit in a new Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to drive policy for tackling homelessness and rough sleeping. The new unit is not part of Labour’s manifesto but is to sit alongside further housing policy pledges for delivering social housing and abolishing no-fault evictions.

Rayner's Gove-style commitment to beautiful homes rubbished by architects

A group of senior architects has responded to the Labour Party’s vision for housing design, warning that the next government risks failing on  housing policy by ‘seducing’ voters with ‘AI-generated populist imagery.’ Labour’s design concepts were created by Create Streets and launched last week, depicting ‘tree-lined streets of townhouses.’ HTA Design’s Ben Derbyshire and several others called the concepts ‘historical, aesthetic populism.’

Drop in planning permissions for new homes

The latest housing pipeline study from the Home Builders Federation has recorded the lowest level of planning permissions for housing schemes in England for 17 years. In the first half of 2024, just 2,472 schemes were granted planning consent, including a 39% drop in London’s housing consents at 7,613 homes.

Disappointing trends in the housing market

The latest RICS Residential Market Survey for May shows a ‘reverse’ in trends earlier this year for positive growth in the housing market, as mortgage rates have edged higher or remained stagnant. Sales and new buyer enquiries in London and the south of England all decreased over the past month, with sales expectations for the next three months showing a marginal recovery.

Election Watch

Britons feel they are poorer since Brexit and governed by untrustworthy politicians, according to survey

The latest British Social Attitudes has shown that public trust and confidence in politics is at a record low, with 79% of people dissatisfied with the way the UK is governed. 58% of people have said that they ‘almost never’ trust politicians to tell the truth, the highest proportion in the survey’s history. The survey also recorded 71% of people believing the UK economy was ‘worse off’ since leaving the EU.

Guardian welcomes Lib Dem manifesto

While stopping short of endorsing the party, the Guardian has published an editorial in support of the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto, labelling its pledges for introducing new taxes on higher earners as ‘the right thing to do.’ and arguing that voters in Conservative-held seats in the south of England should ‘seriously consider’ voting for the Liberal Democrats.

Could tactical voting bring down the Blue Wall?

The Observer reports on the expected prevalence of tactical voting at the election, particularly in so-called ‘Blue Wall’ seats currently held by the Conservatives. The report focuses on Hertfordshire seats where longstanding majorities could be flipped by voters opting for the most likely party to unseat Conservative MPs, including in Welwyn Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, and Harpenden and Berkhamsted. A report in the Telegraph also suggests a population of Remain-voting ‘centrist dads’ in Carshalton and Wallington look set to return the seat to the Liberal Democrats after the Conservatives’ highly marginal victory in 2019. A similar article in the Times reporting from Melksham and Devizes in Wiltshire suggests the Liberal Democrats are also focusing on flooding and river water quality as a dividing line.