Social Housing Weekly - 23 September 2024

Ticket to build?

As part of its 'brownfield first' approach to development, the government has announced plans to support and expedite approval of urban sites like car parks. Delightfully described as a 'Brownfield Passport', these reforms would mean that, where residential proposals meet design and quality standards, the default answer is yes. This is all part of a government effort to speed up the delivery of apartments in busy cities - the quickest way to meet their ambitious housing targets.

This comes as the latest Housing Pipeline report from the Homes Builders Federation (HBF) has found that planning approvals for social housing have fallen by 37% compared to the previous quarter. That there is clear and urgent need to build is not in doubt.

But a self-proclaimed ambition for the "intensification" of urban land is likely to be controversial. Here at LCA, we spend almost all our time talking to London's communities about development and it will come as no surprise that "densification" is a much-spat-out-the-mouth term amongst them. People don't want tall blocks in their areas, a feeling which has intensified, rightly or wrongly, in the wake of Grenfell and subsequent urban fires. 

Now, as the YIMBY-iest of YIMBYs, I can entirely understand the need to get bang for buck from urban land. More homes is always better than some homes in my book. That said, the government is going to have to build a *positive* case for development, rather than just assume it can ram it through because 'my majority is bigger than yours'. As anyone who has ever met a LibDem knows, local politicians follow their constituents when it comes to local development - no Councillor wants to court the unpopularity supporting tower blocks would bring.

There is appetite for this, despite what NIMBY campaigners will tell you. New YouGov polling shows that up to 85% of people in the UK would support development in their area under the 'right' circumstances (more than that below). However, it remains to be seen if the right circumstances are 25-storey towers built on the car park in your neighbourhood. 

To build a positive vision for the future is not, so far, within the new government's playbook. They seem to prefer endless 'hard choices' and painting a sepia-toned picture of 2024 Britain. If they need some comms advice on how to sell development as a concept, perhaps they'd like to get in touch with us at LCA Towers?

Harriet Shone

LCA Director

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Rayner Restrained - by Peter Lord

Are MHCLG's Decent Homes for All targets an impossible dream or a disappointingly unambitious one? 

Everyone loves an ambitious target, and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has set herself an absolute humdinger this week, with a benchmark that at first glance appears so unambiguous and all-encompassing that pulling it off would be an unimaginable achievement. Decent Homes for All - a headline redolent of the sunlit uplands. However (and it is a big however) peer beneath the surface and the unambiguity and ambition both begin to fall apart.

Rayner told Labour Party Conference yesterday that the new homes the government has pledged to build "must be warm, secure and most importantly safe." Not exactly a hard benchmark to achieve for a new building in the twenty-first century. On social housing, an "ambition to be build more social homes than we lose" is also unlikely to set the world alight. 

It is worth stating that the Government's housing policy contains much that is laudable and needed. Bringing forward legislation for Awaab’s Law in the social rented sector to this autumn, and extending it to the private sector, feel like real achievements for a Government still in its early days. Likewise, legislation to ban no-fault evictions will be applauded by many in the sector. It is worth noting, however, that both of these are modest extensions of Tory housing policy. Re-heating the Renters Reform Bill and extending Awaab's law do not exactly feel like moves that match Rayner's political ambition.

The truth is that Rayner is in a tough position of the government's own making. She must sell Labour's housing ambition as radical and ambitious, using her own brand of rhetoric which, like her or loath her, is inspiring to many. Yet she knows that this housing agenda is very restrained, achievable, modest; all words far more likely to be associated with the rational Rachel Reeves than the fiery Angela Rayner.

Herein lies the truth of any Government's political ambition: the Treasury wins. When modest funds do not allow for big ambitions, the ambitions must shrink. A big task for the Housing Secretary who must sell a relatively damp squib as an inspiring agenda. To Rayner's credit, she has risen to this challenge, and by all accounts has done so both effectively and in her trademark style.

Housing in the headlines

New towns for old

The Government’s New Towns Taskforce formally met this week for the first time, choosing Milton Keynes to begin its independent advisory work in recommending potential locations and key matters in delivering a new generation of New Towns. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner also announced the appointment of eight additional expert members to the Taskforce. The membership of the group includes Sir Michael Lyons (English Cities Fund; former Chair of the BBC; and former CEO of Wolverhampton, Nottinghamshire, and Birmingham City councils) and Dame Kate Barker (author of the 2004 Barker Review into UK Housing Supply)

Appeal of the housing ladder "most persuasive argument" for new developments

A new poll by YouGov for Labour Together has found that between 15-20% of British voters would never support additional housing developments in their area, with the remaining 80-85% supportive under conditions. A further poll for the Labour-aligned think tank found provision of GP surgeries and helping young people onto the housing ladder as the most ‘persuasive’ arguments for supporting new homes. Labour Party Conference is set to be marked by a new cohort of younger pro-housebuilding MPs seeking to further boost the party’s growth agenda.

Affordable homes delivery slows in the capital, but number of new social homes rises

The London Assembly has published its annual Affordable Housing Monitor for 2023-24, measuring the Greater London Authority’s progress on delivering on affordable housing targets. In the year to March 2024, under the Affordable Homes Programme’s funding for 2016-23, the Mayor met his target to start work on 116,782 affordable homes with 56% of these now completed, 10,343 of which were completed in 2023-24 alone. Figures for the 2021-26 programme of funding has seen a considerable drop in housing starts, with 1,777 homes started in the year to March 2024. This leaves more than 90% of the Mayor’s target number of homes under the 2021-26 programme required to start in the next two years. The monitor also shows that 88% of homes started for the 2021-26 programme were for social rent, compared to 39% for the 2016-23 programme.

Let's get political

Reeves and Starmer struggle to control message as nurses steal Chancellor's spotlight and Gray continues to haunt Prime Minister

While the Labour Party's top team is trying to keep things on message on day two of their conference, with Reeves pledging no return to austerity, the Royal College of Nursing chose the same time to announce it was rejecting the Government's pay offer for nurses. Meanwhile, the news that Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff Sue Gray is paid more than the Prime Minister himself has continued to attract criticism.

Davey to urge Lib Dems to wipe out Tory heartlands

Leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey is to call on his party to ‘finish the job’ of defeating Conservative MPs in the south of England following the General Election, seeking to replace the Conservatives as the largest and official Opposition party. Speaking at Liberal Democrats party conference, Davey is to present his party as an ‘alternative’ opposition, scrutinising the Government on key issues such as health and social care.