Author: Alex Toal

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Labour’s Commonhold Bill is the start of the end of the leasehold nightmare

New apartment complexes overlooking the Woodberry Wetlands, London by Geoff Henson is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

Last week Labour published its Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill. It is an unquestionable triumph. Ground rents are capped at £250, commonhold is reinvigorated as a realistic tenure, and issues around forfeiture are put to rest.

Most importantly, it sets out a new mechanism for leaseholders to convert to commonhold without the previous requirement to have unanimity between all residents. 

This week is the start to the end of this nightmare, but it is a complex route. It will be up to leaseholders to transition buildings over to commonhold one-at-a-time, and this will be easier on some sites than others.

The Government has also clearly set out a different strategy for reform than their Conservative predecessor. While the Tories set out most of their reforms in two pieces of legislation, the Ground Rent Act (2022) and the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act (2024), Labour’s programme is running on bespoke tracks, with varied primary and secondary legislation to address the wide variety of issues within leasehold.

So, taking a step back, what is Labour doing to end the leasehold nightmare and what will these changes mean for residents?

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What is Commonhold? And how does Labour’s Bill change it?

Currently, most flat owners in the UK are leaseholders. They own everything within the walls of their home, but the overall site is owned by a ‘freeholder’, usually a larger company like a developer or a pension fund. This freeholder is responsible for shared communal areas, and the overall building.

Freeholders can appoint whatever organisation they want to manage the building (a ‘managing agent’), who often charge high fees while delivering a poor service. And freeholders themselves are often unresponsive and fail to act proactively to respond to leaseholders’ needs.

Commonhold is an alternative model introduced by Labour in 2002. Homeowners collectively own the whole site, and decide on things like which managing agents to appoint collectively.

However, a number of issues with commonhold mean that it was not widely adapted. It requires the consent of all leaseholders and their mortgage lenders, and there are a number of governance issues with commonhold that make it difficult for homeowners to manage buildings effectively.

Finally, without any incentive to build commonhold sites, developers have almost never done this, and instead can either keep the freehold to take some income themselves, or sell this off to another organisation.

Labour’s Bill fixes commonhold in three key ways:

  1. It bans all new leasehold flats except in exceptional circumstances, on which the Government is consulting currently.
  2. It introduces a new mechanism by which leaseholders can convert to commonhold with 50% of leaseholders consenting (or with unanimity if less than 50% of residents are ‘qualifying leaseholders’, such as in shared ownership blocks or where a freeholder lets out flats within a block).
  3. It has a wide array of fixes to commonhold which sort out its governance issues, from helping to appoint directors, to regulating dispute resolution and ensuring more responsible governance.

This will allow substantially more blocks across the UK to convert to commonhold, as thousands of sites have already reached the 50% threshold for other mechanisms within leasehold, such as collective enfranchisement and obtaining the Right to Manage.

What else is Labour doing on leasehold?

Within the Bill there is a lot more to be excited about. The ground rent cap will lower costs for nearly a million leaseholders paying over the £250 level, as well as eliminating the issue of homeowners being unable to sell properties with escalating ground rents. The new framework for forfeiture will prevent freeholders from being able to repossess homes for minor breaches of contracts or debts as low as £350.

The Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook also confirmed further primary legislation to make it easier for leaseholders to renew or ‘buy out’ their lease through reforms to the process of setting valuation rates.

And, outside of the Bill, Labour is acting to fix leasehold.

In order to tackle escalating service charges, new regulations are pending which will see a new regulatory regime for managing agents, increased transparency and scrutiny of costly major works, and a ‘right to veto’ managing agents which will make it easier for leaseholders to both request a change of managing agent and to decline a freeholder’s suggestion.

And a response is also pending to a consultation held over the winter period for freehold owners paying service charges on unadopted communal infrastructure (otherwise known as ‘fleecehold’).

After this – what will the challenges be?

Three main challenges exist for the Government less in enacting this reform.

First are the courts, the major residential freeholders are famously litigious and have already successfully held up delays to leasehold reform over the past year through launching a judicial review. While the appetite for further action is uncertain, the risk is present for freeholders to attempt this again, particularly over measures retroactively capping ground rent and overriding existing leases.

Second will be ensuring a smooth transition for the leaseholders who do want to move to commonhold. Getting rid of often distant, unresponsive and exploitative freeholder will be a huge improvement in the lives of millions of leaseholders. But shifting to making complex decisions about building management and safety in partnership with your neighbours also has difficulties. Reems of advice and support will be needed for new commonholders, particularly in blocks which do not have a long history of collective enfranchisement.

And finally will be what remains for the leaseholders who cannot convert. Even the reinvigorated commonhold, shared ownership will still be a separate permitted lease, and many blocks struggle to reach the threshold of 50% support for changes such as the Right to Manage because a large portion of the block are buy-to-let landlords. The Government does have an extensive reform programme to make leasehold fairer for these cohorts, but it will be worth monitoring the conversion process to see what more can be done for them.

Labour’s Commonhold Bill is the biggest change to housing law in years, and fundamentally challenges the concept of land and housing as an asset which underpins much of our problematic housing system. Such a bold change will require political will and expert attention to get right, and it is up to all of us in the Labour movement to get it over the line.

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How Labour can turn housing outputs into electoral outcomes

General Election campaigning, Hitchin, United Kingdom - 01 July 2024 by Keir Starmer is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

This was first published in the Young Fabians journal Anticipations

Anyone reading Red Brick is engaged enough in politics to know the extent of Labour’s housing achievements one year into government. Planning reform, shake-ups in private renting and leasehold, £39 billion into social housebuilding, Labour’s record has been impressive, and every stakeholder I speak with as Red Brick’s editor is blown away by the new Government’s progress.  

The crucial question for anyone in politics, however, is ‘so what’? Two critical factors impede Labour’s ability to turn housing success into political reward. The first is that the Government’s rhetoric is focused on outputs rather than outcomes. Even if Labour builds 1.5 million homes, turns around social housebuilding, and reforms problematic tenures, the price of buying and renting will continue to rise, even if this increase would have been lower had Labour not acted so boldly.

The second is that Labour is likely to miss its headline targets. Housebuilding runs in cycles of five years or longer, and even after a sprint of bold reforms, housing starts in the first quarter of 2025 were 9% lower than in 2024 due to a long tail of Tory failure.

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In this context, Labour needs to consider the right framework with which to talk about housing, to future-proof the likely missing of the 1.5 million homes goal and to create a cohesive narrative of its success in this key policy area.  

The first step of this is to consider how voters interact with the housing crisis. First of these is through the lens of cost, when asked about the most important housing issue facing Britain, 50% of voters picked the cost of renting, followed by 49% identifying the cost of buying (Leeds Building Society).  The other way is through the housing crisis’ visible impacts, most notably around homelessness and rough sleeping, with 46% of people thinking that homelessness is a significant issue in their local area (Centre for Homelessness Impact/Ipsos).

To address the first issue, Labour needs to pivot its discourse on tenure reform to a cost-of-living issue. For instance, while Labour campaigners frequently bring up ending Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions as the key measure in Renters’ Rights Bill, voters look even more favourably on limiting the number of rent increases per year (70% support) or enabling tenants to challenge rent increases (70%), than ending Section 21 (58%) (Ipsos).

At the same time, Labour needs to pivot its housebuilding narrative from talking about housing as a good in and of itself, to a laser focus in both policy and communications on the homes which will deliver the most social good.

An average voter may not connect a 3-bed newbuild with addressing rough sleeping, whereas it is easy to argue that a social home helps a long-term private renter, a prospective home buyer, as well as those with greatest housing need. While voters are supportive of new homes in general, they are even more enthusiastic about building when it is affordable, on brownfield sites, and in well-connected locations (YouGov/CPRE). Labour cannot only say that is building more homes, it also has to make a case about the value added by those homes.

‘Backing the builders not the blockers’, worked well at the last election. But, as the Government, Labour can credibly be viewed as the establishment, and needs to be careful about siding with unpopular vested interests. Only 24% of voters have a positive view of landlords (YouGov), and only 2% trust developers when it comes to large-scale housing applications (Grosvenor). Meanwhile, the public see developers as second only to the Tories’ in their responsibility for the housing crisis, with 63% viewing housebuilders as partially or largely responsible for causing the country’s housing issues (YouGov).

The Government recently won national headlines for fining developers for anti-competitive practices, showing how even moderate moves here can win broad acclaim. Reforms to enforce social housing requirements on ‘grey belt’ sites and diversify the housing industry by encouraging SME housebuilders can build on this narrative that Labour is taking on unpopular ‘vested interests’ in housing.

Meanwhile, across the aisle are the Conservatives, who failed to take action for 15 years, allowed costs to rise, and failed to act on poor behaviour on developers or landlords (many of the latter group making up their benches). And waiting in the wings is Reform UK, whose leadership is replete with property tycoons such as Nick Candy and Richard Tice. The contrast message could not be staring us any more clearly in the face.

One year into Government, and Labour’s laundry list of housing achievements is a mile long. But to reap electoral gain we need to rewrite this into the poetry of campaigning. Tackling costs and vested interests alike can and should be our mantra to show voters that Labour is on their side, that Labour represents a break from the past, and that our greatest electoral contenders would threaten this progress.

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‘So what has Labour done differently?’ – 50 housing wins from Labour’s first year in power

General Election campaigning, Reading, United Kingdom - 18 June 2024 by Keir Starmer MP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

One year ago, we asked the question ‘but what will Labour do differently?’ on housing ahead of the 2024 general election. Ahead of the polls, Labour was making substantial promises around its housing plans. 1.5 million homes, a generational boost in social housing, as well as fixing fundamentally flawed tenures in the private rented sector and leasehold among other promises gave hope to a sector which had been so neglected under the Conservatives.

While Labour’s first year in Government has been challenging, with difficulties at home and greater uncertainty abroad, few would have expected that it would get so much done in its first year on housing.

At the first anniversary of the election, now marks the perfect opportunity to review all that Labour has achieved in housing since entering Government, as well as looking ahead to what the next year could hold.

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The road to 1.5 million homes

The Government’s flagship policy on housing was its pledge to build 1.5 million homes in this Parliament. And, while figures in industry, and even the Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook, have admitted that this is likely a stretch target, the progress which the Government has made will set the UK on a permanent path to delivering more homes.

Shortly after the election, the Government set out addressing issues with individual sites, reversing ministerial vetos on individual sites such as around Liverpool Docks (1), and establishing a New Homes Accelerator to take direct action on individual sites (2). This has also been partnered with a new subsidiary of Homes England, the National Housing Bank, with £16 billion of capital leveraging an additional £53 billion of private investment to build half a million homes (3).

Crucial to this has been making the planning system more favourable to delivering more homes at greater speed. This has involved updating the NPPF to restore housing targets (4), to reallocate low-quality ‘grey belt’ land for new homes (5), and to mandate that local authorities have a 5-year land supply and a local plan (6), the Government has undergone a number of ambitious steps in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. This has included modernising planning committees to empower councillors to deliver better-quality projects (7), delegating more decisions to officers to allow for more rules-based planning decisions (8), and streamlining planning for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), so that homes are not left without critical infrastructure (9). This work is supported by the recruitment of an additional 300 planning officers to improve capacity in local authorities (10).

Nor are the Government’s changes purely a charter for large developers, and they have included mandating faster build-out rates to prevent developers from a ‘slow-build’ approach to prioritise profit over homes (11). More support has also been provided for SME builders through establishing a new ‘medium site’ category with reduced planning rules (12), setting aside more Homes England land for smaller builders (13) and establishing a Small Sites Aggregator to unlock small sites which otherwise would not be developed (14).

However, reaching 1.5 million homes cannot be reached through planning alone, and the Government has also been active in ensuring that there is a sustainable workforce to produce the homes that we need. This has included setting up Skills England, a national body for addressing the skills shortage (15), setting aside an additional £600 million for construction sector skills (16), and establishing a Construction Skills Mission Board with an aim of recruiting an additional 100,000 new construction workers per year (17).

Key to the Government’s long-term plans are also New Towns, and while there were fears before the election that these would be unfeasible, not only did has the Government set up a New Towns Taskforce (18), but they identified 100 sites for these, with work due to start on at least 12 before the next election (19).

(See more on what the Government is doing to address the skills shortage from Lauren Edwards MP)

(See more on the Government’s plans for New Towns from Shaun Davies MP)

A generational boost to social and affordable housing

While boosting housing supply is critical, it is social and affordable homes which are most crucially needed for those with greatest housing need. While the last Government allowed 120,000 homes to be sold through the Right to Buy, Labour has already curtailed this, not only reducing discounts severely (20), and announcing that newbuild social homes will be exempt from the Right to Buy for 35 years and that social tenants will have had to have lived in their home for 10 years before being eligible (21).

Not only has the Government stopped the outflow of social homes, but they have meaningfully set the groundwork to increasing the delivery of more social homes, through instructing Homes England to direct funding primarily to social homes (22), and reforming Compulsory Purchase Orders in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to allow local authorities to buy land at existing use price rather than inflated ‘hope value’ for social housing (23). Finally, increasing the funding for social housing featured prominently at all of the Government’s major fiscal moments, with £500madded to the Affordable Homes Programmein the Autumn Budget (24), £2 billionat the Spring Statement (25), before an increase of 50% from the Conservatives’ Affordable Homes Programme to spend £39 billion on affordable homes in the recent Spending Review (26). This is combined projected to increase social housebuilding sixfold, building 300,000 new social and affordable homes over the next decade, 60% of which will be at social rent.

Finally, housing associations and local authorities have been supported to have greater financial stability, not only by being included in Government funding for cladding remediation (27), but providing greater certainty of social rent, with a ten-year rent settlement to bring social rents back to 2015 levels in real terms, and plans for social rent convergence so that artificially reduced rents are brought up to standard (28).

Improving the quality of existing stock

While delivering new homes is crucial, critical issues with our existing housing stock persist, particularly in larger blocks and in social housing. This is somewhere where the Government has taken direct action, implementing Awaab’s Law into social housing later this year (29), and setting out plans for a new Decent Homes Standard for social and private rented homes (30), alongside a first-ever Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard in social rented homes (31).

The Government has also established a plan to act on all 58 recommendations of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry (32), including introducing a single construction sector regulator. This has been alongside setting out a Remediation Acceleration Plan to fast-track the vital work to address building safety defects on high rise buildings (33).

The Government has also put their money where their mouth is on housing quality, setting aside £13.2bn for a Warm Homes Plan to bring 300,000 homes up to EPC C level (34).

Read more about the Government’s plans for building safety from Darren Paffey MP)

Fixing flawed tenures

The 4.7 million private renters and 5.3 million leaseholders in England and Wales know well that the arcane rules governing their own homes are in stark need of reform. And the Government has recognised this, launching a bold programme to fix these tenures.

In the private rented sector, the Government is on the verge of passing the Renters’ Rights Bill. Not only will this outlaw ‘no-fault’ Section 21 evictions (35), it will outlaw rental bidding wars (36), introduce a mandatory private rental sector database (37).

The Bill contains a myriad of other improvements, from the right to request a pet (38), to capping rent advances at one month (39), as well as establishing rent tribunals for tenants to charge unreasonable increases (40), but a list of 50 achievements could likely include reforms from the Renters’ Rights Bill.

Meanwhile, the Government has set out plans to implement their predecessor’s rushed Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act (41), as well as fast-tracking reforms to the Right to Manage to ensure that leaseholders can hire and fire their managing agents with greater ease (42). The Government has also published a Commonhold White Paper (43), with plans to publish a full Leasehold and Commonhold Bill later this year (44), with a range of commitments already made, including mandatory qualifications for managing agents (45).

Addressing homelessness head-on

The most immediate symptom of the housing crisis is that of homelessness and rough sleeping, with the number of families in temporary accommodation reaching 126,400under the Conservatives.

The Government has acted here head-on, not only setting a Cross-Government Taskforce on Homelessness chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister (46), but putting their money where their mouth is, with a £1 billion boost to funding at the Autumn Budget (47). Attempts are also being made to address the use of bed and breakfasts as temporary accommodation with Emergency Accommodation Reduction Pilots in the 20 local authorities with the highest B&B usage (48).

While the recommendations of this taskforce are still to be seen, a number of crucial steps have already been taken. These have included exempting care leavers and survivors of domestic abuse from punitive ‘local connection tests’ for local authority housing support to ensure that they can receive critical help to prevent homelessness (49), and establishing a commitment to repealing the cruel and outdated Vagrancy Act in the Spring of 2026 to finally decriminalise rough sleeping (50).

Check out more on tackling temporary accommodation from Naushabah Khan MP)

Looking ahead: what do we need in Year 2?

Despite this progress, the Government cannot rest on their laurels, particularly with the number of new starts on site decreasing, the numbers of households in temporary accommodation on the rise, and rents continuing to increase in the PRS.

A lot of the achievements on this list, while laudable, consist of plans, targets and goal-setting. While this is undoubtedly needed in the first year of a new Government, tracking their progress and ensuring their implementation is key.

When it comes to new rights in leasehold and the private rental sector, resourcing needs to be provided to local authorities, regulators, and the First Tier Tribunal to take the increased caseload, and any gaps and loopholes need to be carefully monitored.

Moreover, blocks to delivering new homes, particularly social and affordable homes, need to be reviewed and analysed in-depth. Concerns continue to be raised with the Building Safety Regulator, as well as with viability rules and the difficulty of delivering social homes on brownfield sites. Reforms to these to enable faster delivery of homes from registered providers may well be needed to meet the Government’s housing ambitions.

Finally, while the Government has undoubtedly done a great deal of work in these areas across this year on fixing the housing crisis, more needs to be done to make the political case that these changes will actually improve voters’ lives. Even if all of Labour’s housing goals are met, showing that a slower increase in rents or prices, or slightly faster movement in social housing waiting lists, is down to the Government of the day is difficult at the best of times, and even more challenging in a competitive multi-party system. The Government needs to identify a compelling housing story to tell which links together all 50 of these accomplishments, and really sells it to voters, not just for its own sake, but to achieve a long-term political consensus for sustained housing action.

One year in, and the Labour Government is moving with remarkable speed and ambition to fix the housing crisis, proving that, when it comes to housing, change is being delivered. What this change amounts to could well be decisive both politically and substantively for Labour’s legacy.

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Labour’s opportunity to disrupt housing taxation

HM Treasury Entrance sign by HM Treasury is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Economic management is quickly becoming the defining factor of this Government. Penned in by tax pledges, and with less room to borrow than previous administrations, the choices which it is making to free up funding for cash-starved public services is having severe political effects.

Increases in employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs), a freeze in Personal Independence Payments (PIP), and limiting the eligibility of the Winter Fuel Allowance have all been deeply unpopular and cut through with voters.

 Creative solutions to find money are required, and looking at the antiquated way in which housing is taxed could not only free up more money for public services, but result in direct cash benefit for lower income households.  

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How do we currently tax housing?

Broadly in the UK housing is taxed in three ways.

First, all voters pay a portion of the value of their house in council tax (total value: £32.7bn/year). The calculations around council tax are somewhat byzantine. Rather than being directly proportional to property values, homes are put into ‘bands’ based on the value of the home in 1991 and have taxes levied on them on this basis. A home worth £320,000 in my home borough of Haringey, for instance, pays 1.4% of its value every year in council tax, while one valued at £68,001 pays 3.2%.

These taxes have also exacerbated existing regional inequalities, with households in the North East paying 18% more than households in London after years of successive increases, despite the fact that house prices have increased in London and the South East significantly more than they have in the North in this time.

Home buyers also pay a portion of the value of their new home in Stamp Duty (total value: £11.6bn/year). Stamp Duty is widely criticised as a tax on housing mobility, rather than a tax on housing wealth, which disincentivises moves such as downsizing, which could have a positive effect on the overall housing market.

Finally, Inheritance Tax (IHT, total value £6bn/year) is increasingly a tax on housing as the value of homes has increased and the threshold for paying IHT has been frozen since 2010. The number of estates liable for IHT has increased from 15,000 in 2009/10 to 27,800 in 2021/2, the percentage of estates paying IHT is estimated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies to increase from 4% currently to 7% in 2032.

Both council tax and inheritance tax are rated by voters as among the most unpopular according to polling by YouGov, with 45% of voters perceiving them as unfair.

How could these be reformed?

All three of these taxations are ripe for reform, and tackling unpopular levies is a clear way for Labour to show itself as embracing its change mantra and challenging existing unfair structures.

But doing so will inevitably create losers as well as winners, and so any changes must be carefully thought through.

Commonly-suggested ideas for council tax reform, for instance, have included updating the valuations from their 1991 basis, and making them directly proportional to property value, rather than putting homes in crude bands. Reforming council tax would disproportionately benefit the poorest households, but some poorer households, particularly living in London’s warped housing market, would also be liable for higher bills.

Meanwhile, reforming Stamp Duty would likely lead to lower receipts in the short-term but have a more positive impact in the long run. Ideas for this have included introducing an option to defer payments over a longer period as part of a gradual move to levy a much smaller rate annually, rather than to levy higher charges at the point of sale.

Doing so would both benefit younger people more likely to be making their first purchase, as well as older people looking to downsize, but making the final move to an annual levy on all homes would have substantial political risk.

Tackling IHT may be considerably simpler. Of the 27,800 estates which paid IHT in 2021/2, the 3,153 estates worth over £2 million paid over half of the £6 billion collected in that year. Introducing graded bands for estates under this level, while levying higher taxes on this upper level would give a default tax cut to tens of thousands of people a year during one of the most emotionally difficult times of their life, while shifting the burden to a group most would see as super-rich.

However, the Government’s recent moves with tapering IHT zero-rating for farms and businesses has shown that any tinkering with so-called ‘death taxes’, even when levied on households with higher levels of assets, can be politically dangerous. So even this taxing double-millionaires at a higher rate may well have political risks.

None of these options are necessarily easy, but in a time of increased fiscal strain and in the aftermath of a number of politically difficult tax rises, creative thinking around taxation is more important than ever. And, as the housing market continues to represent a substantial source of wealth, how this is taxed in a sustainable fashion needs to be in our national discussion.   

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Labour’s Planning Bill is the keystone of its housing delivery plans

Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner NPPF visit by No. 10 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

On Monday 24th March, the most ambitious planning reform in a generation will be debated in the House of Commons. Labour’s’ Planning and Infrastructure Bill is the latest in a number of changes to the planning system, and will be central to the Government’s plan to deliver 1.5 million homes over this Parliament.

What does the Planning and Infrastructure Bill do?

The remit of the Bill goes well beyond housing and targets the planning obstacles to delivery in a number of key areas:

  • Simplifying the approval process for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), including by reducing consultation requirements for these.
  • Establishing a Nature Restoration Fund for developers to pay into to address issues like nutrient neutrality.
  • Compulsory Purchase reform, so that councils can acquire land for social housing at existing use value rather than inflated ‘hope’ value.
  • Reforming planning committees, including the introduction of compulsory training and a delegation scheme to empower non-political council officers to make more decisions.
  • Introducing sub-regionally developed Spatial Development Strategies to encourage councils to work across their borders.

The Bill also has a number of other measures such as the devolution of planning fees, and reforming and strengthening development corporations to make their roll-out easier.

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How will this address the housing crisis?

In essence, the Bill eliminates some important reasons for which homes do not make it through the consenting process, or are stalled after approval.

For instance, introducing a Nature Restoration Fund will help to unlock 160,000 homes blocked by nutrient neutrality rules.

Reforming Compulsory Purchase Orders will also make it easier for local authorities to deliver council homes. Hope value can inflate agricultural land by as much as 275 times its existing value, and can result in councils having to decrease the percentage of social homes on a site.

Measures around spatial development strategies and reforming committees should also help to resolve issues where large sites are made more contentious due to the lack of existing infrastructure. By ensuring that councils are coordinating across boundaries to provide key services, and by ensuring that more decisions are made by council officers, political factors should play less of a role in discretionary planning decisions.  

A keystone to other Labour’s plans:

The Bill cannot be seen in isolation, and instead has to be viewed as part of a package of measures which the Government is using to achieve a much-needed uplift in housing delivery.

It comes alongside an update to the National Planning Policy Framework, which restored and strengthened housing targets, alongside allocating low-quality ‘grey belt’ land for high quality developments with affordable and social housing and the enrichment of green space.

There have also been a number of reforms to boost delivery in urban areas, not least the introduction of brownfield planning passports, so that development on brownfield sites automatically goes ahead if it meets local planning requirements. Also in this category are plans to allow for ‘zoning’ around train stations.

Finally, the Government has added £800 million to the Affordable Homes Programme, and refocused it on the delivery of social housing, so that private housebuilding is supplemented with crucial state provision.

Labour’s ‘everything theory of housing’

It was clear from the outset that the Government had a ‘Housing theory of everything’. Solving the housing crisis will be crucial to a number of Labour’s aims to improve living standards, generate growth, and solve the climate crisis, and Labour clearly understands this.

But the way in which they have gone about this programme also shows that they have an ‘everything theory of housing’, using a range of levers to boost delivery, and clearly identifying which issues need solving through primary legislation, which through policy tweaks, and which through further funding.

Doing this alongside passing a generational boost to the rights of private renters, reforming the feudal leasehold system and introducing commonhold as a default tenure, boosting funding for homelessness prevention and setting up a cross-Government homelessness taskforce, increasing resourcing for the Building Safety Regulator and accelerating the remediation of dangerous cladding, investing £3.4 billion into a new Warm Homes Plan, and identifying 100 sites for urban extensions or new towns, shows a Government in hyperdrive to fix this most pressing of crises.

Planning reforms have so far primarily addressed stalled housing delivery in exurban and rural areas, where delivering new homes is, in theory, easiest. Going forward, the Government also needs to tackle other critical barriers to building new homes, such as the cost of building homes, and the construction sector’s skills shortage, not to mention issues around densification and regeneration or urban sites. Looking ahead to the Comprehensive Spending Review, finding ways to support councils building as has been laid out in Red Brick’s 10-year plan for housing series will be welcome to boost much-needed council homes.

But, for the present, the Second Reading debate of the Bill on 24th March should provide an opportunity to celebrate legislation which will meaningfully contribute to ending the housing crisis, and to make the case for how important it will be going forwards for this to remain at the top of the Government’s agenda.

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Focusing on enforcement and how Labour can embrace disruption from government

Image by Sébastian Dah is licensed under Creative Commons
Image by Sébastian Dah is licensed under Creative Commons

The past few weeks have shown just how much Donald Trump’s return to the White House has disrupted politics globally. At home, the new President has been a bull in the china shop of the US Government, freezing programmes and firing thousands of staff with little clear rationale. Abroad, the biggest realignment of geopolitics has occurred, with the US all but switching sides in the conflict in Ukraine and Trump’s Vice President JD Vance haranguing the principles of liberal democracy at the Munich Security Conference.

Meanwhile, the new administration’s manic energy of disruption has been felt as Reform UK have soared to first place in opinion polling, and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) secured their best election result.

It is clear that there is an appetite in the electorate for speed, disruption, and a reset. Patience for norms or rules has eroded, and a desire for change, which Labour capitalised on in their 2024 election victory, is still burning bright.

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But embracing this appetite in Government is hard, particularly with the circumstances of Labour’s win. Labour now has an insurmountable majority in parliament, backed up with Labour mayors in all but one Combined Authority, and is even the largest party in local government. If there is anything which Labour cannot do, it is likely to appear to the electorate that it is through a lack of political will, rather than through the many obstacles which still exist.

And these hurdles are real indeed. As Andy Bates recently pointed out, the social housing sector is a web of housing associations and local authorities, who have at best a loose sense of accountability through grant funding or elected members respectively. But this can be extended even more when considering the whole housing ecosystem of developers, contractors, freeholders, regulators, and landlords. There are tens of thousands of organisations who are involved in delivering the Government’s housing missions, but who do not always share the Government’s motivation.

It is with this in mind that focusing on these organisations can not only be a political opportunity for Labour, but can also expose the flaws in the system which legislation can fix.

Picking fights on behalf of constituents against seemingly unaccountable bodies is clearly good politics. Not only that, but if done with sufficient force it can actually yield results.

This has most clearly been seen recently in the over 100-strong group of Labour MPs holding managing agents to account, who have already secured several concessions from FirstPort, the largest managing agent in the country, including meetings with residents so that FirstPort can be held to account on an estate-by-estate basis.

But it also offers the opportunity to expose just how lacking the regulatory state is in its ability to ensure compliance with existing rules, let alone new legislation.

Quality issues on many newbuild estates are famously documented, from faulty sewage systems to holes willed with disposable coffee cups. Meanwhile, existing private rental sector regulation, such as the Homes (Fit for Human Habitation) Act remain blatantly unenforced in thousands of properties across the country. Recently, the UK’s burgeoning Building Safety Regulator has seen significant teething problems as it enforces much-needed regulations on high rise buildings, with 86% of building control ‘Gateway 2’ application rejected.

Labour is pushing through ambitious programmes of reform in the private rental sector with the Renters’ Rights Bill, newbuild standards with the Future Homes Standard, and reforms to the feudal leasehold system with a new Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill, alongside the arduous process of implementing the previous Government’s poorly written and loophole-ridden Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act.

The common theme across all of this legislation, however, is that enforcing these new rules is going to be a significant challenge. Nearly half of housebuilders have reported that they are ready for the Future Homes Standard. Meanwhile, new standards in the Renters’ Rights Bill such as Awaab’s Law, will only be online in the social housing sector in October of this year, after receiving Royal Assent in July 2023.

Why this is so widespread is more difficult to diagnose. Depending on the sector, the weight and speed of new regulations, lack of capacity in enforcement authorities, a lack of engagement and transparency with industry, or simply organisational complacency, can be contributing factors, and that is even before considering the difficult financial situations facing many local authorities, housing associations, and even developers.

By calling out, meeting with and working to improve the performance of organisations and individuals who provide and maintain our housing, Labour politicians have the opportunity to vocally stand up on constituents’ behalf, to achieve real outcomes, and also investigate first-hand the deficiencies of the regulatory state.

The bold reforms which Labour MPs are pushing through in Parliament will only matter if they can actually be enforced. And, by embracing the spirit of disruption and calling out the organisations directly responsible for their constituents’ housing, they have the opportunity to embrace the agenda driving forces of populism across the world and utilise it for good.

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Rachel Reeves’ war on uncertainty

Today, Chancellor Rachel Reeves set out the Government’s plans to promote growth and to kickstart the UK’s economy after a decade of stagnation under the Conservatives.

This followed recent announcements from the Government over the weekend which caused a stir across the housing world. First, Reeves announced a plan to introduce a “zoning scheme”, with a presumption in favour of development around train stations to allow homes to be built faster and without unnecessary barriers. And Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook announced a White Paper on Planning and Infrastructure which reduced the extent to which nationally significant infrastructure projects would have to consult with a broad range of stakeholders.

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It is clear that stability and certainty is one of the Government’s main arguments for the UK to be an attractive investment destination. With an unpredictable Trump across the Atlantic, and political instability across Europe, Labour’s sizeable majority and loyal party makes the UK a rare island of (relative) calm.

This stability is clearly being driven from Reeves, famously an accomplished chess player, a game whose stability derives from the fact that it only has three variables: the two players participating and which one begins.

In comparison, our planning system currently resembles more a game of Monopoly, driven by the randomness of dice throws, which card you pick out from the Chance pack, and how happy Uncle Greg is with the Christmas present you gave him. The success of a project can rely on a myriad of factors from the personalities of council officers, the reaction of statutory consultees like fire services and environmental bodies, whether the application is close to an election which may make committee members nervous, and whether objectors have the resources to launch a legal challenge. This uncertainty can hold up even the most basic project by months if not years, leading to added costs and less certainty.

The UK’s discretionary planning system is also increasingly an outlier, with most comparable countries instead opting for a zoning system, where projects are approved more by the letter and less by the interpretation of existing rules. If a housing project is promoted in an area designated for housing, it has to fulfil a set of requirements and is then good to go.

In response to this, the Government’s actions seem to attempt to create something closer to a zoning system, particularly in places where the argument for new homes is strongest; they are introducing planning passports for brownfield sites, releasing ‘grey belt’ land under ‘golden rules’ of development, reducing the extent to which judicial review can hold back housing projects, and increasing the amount of delegation to officers from planning committees.

This is all good as far as certainty is concerned. Fewer vetos within the planning system will create greater stability and expectation of a return on investment for people investing money into new housing. At the very least, this will mean that new homes get built faster. An optimistic take would also say that if investors are surer of their returns they will be more able to set aside money for infrastructure investment around new homes, and providing affordable and social housing alongside homes for private sale.

But, as encouraging as these steps are, it is uncertain how many new homes they will deliver in the long-term, with planning departments still under-resourced, developers weighed down with new environmental and quality standards, and delivery in urban areas hampered with significant viability challenges.

While Rachel Reeves may have claimed a few victories in the war on uncertainty, a few major campaigns await.

A final, implementable version of the Future Homes Standard is needed, so that developers have a clear idea of the environmental standard for new homes and adapt accordingly.

Work needs to be done to smooth the operations of the Building Safety Regulator, which is still rejecting 86% of Gateway 2 applications (at building control stage). An active approach needs to be taken to ensure that the BSR provides clear guidelines, advice and feedback, and to resource them to provide swift and clear verdicts.

And considerable work needs to be done around viability, so that developers and local authorities have a clear understanding of what can be delivered on individual urban sites, how much social housing can be provided from day one, and how long projects will take.

All of this is even before considering more major questions around housing. How can the myriad of documents developers need to submit be simplified? How can local authority and housing association development capacity be increased to deliver the social homes we sorely need? And what work is needed to challenge our existing model of speculative development, to modernise construction practices, and to encourage smaller sites and diversity in the housebuilding sector?

While the economic winds may be challenging for the Government, housing is its one place where it is forging a strong path. Builders are projecting an increase of new homes, including of social and affordable housing, and the industry as a whole is fully behind Labour’s plans.

But, in order to turn this mood music into a plan for 1.5 million homes, the Government needs to grasp the nettle of all causes of uncertainty, and work to create a stable environment for new homes. 

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Is there hope for housing in the Lib Dems?

Ed Davey & SSEs Paul Smith by Department of Energy and Climate Change is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

2024 has been a year of unprecedented success for the Liberal Democrats. With the party seeing a record 72 MPs elected in July, the party has managed to quickly turn around a decade of difficulties since their time in the coalition government.

With this comes genuine power. The Lib Dems chair three parliamentary select committees, most notably the Health and Social Care Committee. Ed Davey has two regular questions at PMQs, allowing him an avenue to forge a national policy platform.

The Liberal Democrats are also in power across 68 local authorities across the country, covering over 6 million people.   

This success puts the party in an awkward space, and one which the British political system struggles to accommodate, as a true third party, well in advance of Reform or the Greens, but a fair distance from the official opposition.

Where the Lib Dems go next is up for debate. Are they the party of attention-grabbing stunts and comical bar-charts? Or are they a serious contender for government, needing to flip a mere 25 seats to overtake the Conservatives?

When it comes to housing, this duality runs deep.

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The detail

The Lib Dems had the most detailed housing proposals of any party at the election, with over 500 words on their plans across housing delivery and homelessness. Their headline pledges were as follows:

  • Building 380,000 a year across the UK, including 150,000 social homes a year, majoring on community-lead development
  • Banning no-fault evictions, making three-year tenancies the default, and creating a national register of licensed landlords
  • Giving local authorities, the powers to end Right to Buy in their areas.
  • Ending rough sleeping within the next Parliament
  • Abolishing residential leaseholds and capping ground rents to a nominal fee

The full plan is available here, with fair detail on ending rough sleeping and empowering social tenants.

A starkly divided party

Many will be familiar with the Liberal Democrats’ divides over housing delivery, most notably at coming to a head at the party’s 2023 conference, where members defeated a motion supported by the party’s leadership which would have abandoned their target of 380,000 homes.

Some decry the party as a hub for opportunistic ‘NIMBYs’ seeking to oppose all new housing. A quick search of “Liberal Democrats” and “housing” reveals a slew of local opposition to housebuilding since the election, including in the New Forest and South Leicestershire.

But it also brings up cases of Liberal Democrats pushing Labour councils to increase their affordable housing targets in Lambeth and Southwark, highlighting inaction on an abandoned development in Wiltshire, and even facing down opposition to new homes while in administration in  the Cotswolds.

The party’s main housing figures, Vicky Slade and Gideon Amos, also have real housing experience, as a council leader and town planner respectively.

The Lib Dems in Parliament and the delivery dividing line

While some opposition parties like the Conservatives, Reform UK or even the Greens have hit out hard against some of Labour’s housing announcements, the Liberal Democrats have been more reserved in their approach.

In Parliament they have been openly supportive several of the Government’s measures, including welcoming the Government’s Remediation Acceleration Plan and voting for the Renters’ Rights Bill.

The main dividing line which they have so far placed has been on housing delivery. While the party is supportive of increasing housing supply, they have been openly critical of ‘top-down’ housing targets and have instead favoured a community-led approach, with a primary focus of delivering 150,000 social homes a year.

This was reflected most recently in Amos’ response to the Government’s NPPF reforms:

“Top-down planning diktats risk a surge in speculative greenfield permissions of the kind that the Minister is concerned about, for homes that are out of people’s reach. Instead, let us fund, incentivise and focus on the social and affordable homes that we need…”

This may be a popular rallying cry, but it ignores the reality of the past few years.

Opposing ‘top-down’ targets ignores the reality that when the last Government abandoned targets, housebuilding collapsed, and that the new Government’s approach to reinstating these has been followed by new starts increasing.

A target of 150,000 social homes a year, while admirable, ignores the fact that, even going by the more generous measure of ‘affordable homes’,  fewer than a third of this goal are currently being delivered. Using this goal as a reason to oppose new housebuilding in general, without a firm plan to deliver it, is pure opportunism.

And suggesting community-led planning as an alternative ignores the fact that few people outside of a hyper-engaged, largely more privileged minority, get involved in the planning system as it is.

While the Liberal Democrats’ vision for housebuilding may be a principled one, it appears out-of-place amid its largely more pragmatic approach. More importantly, it allows space for MPs, including the party’s Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper, to opportunistically rally against building more homes in their local area.

Is there real hope for the Lib Dems?

Unlike the other opposition parties, the Liberal Democrats have a genuine plan to solve the housing crisis, with a broad policy platform with several good ideas.

In order to have a real impact, however, the party needs to moderate its anti-housing opportunists and play less into the populist rallying cries of more minor parties. Most importantly, it needs to acknowledge that any housing policy needs the keystone of a serious plan for delivery, which recognises both the scale of the challenge and the need for a top-down approach.

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Kemi Badenoch’s shift right bodes ill for housing

Kemi Badenoch MP (North West Essex, Conservative) by House of Commons is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The 2024 general election saw the worst result for the Conservative Party in terms of share of seats and votes since its formation in the nineteenth century.

But the Conservatives’ failure should not preclude their return. Only three Conservative leaders have failed to become prime minister, and some recent polls have already put them ahead of Labour. Even a minor swing could put them back in power, with Kemi Badenoch as prime minister.

Badenoch served as Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government between the election and her victory in the Conservative leadership contest, and so we know more about her housing positions than other aspects of her views. And her approach so far demonstrates a worrying drift to the right.

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Shifting right on renters’ reform

One of the biggest disappointments of the last Government was a failure to pass the Renters’ Reform Bill. In ending Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions and bringing in new standards to the private rented sector, the legislation would have been life-changing for millions of private renters.

While Badenoch served in administrations which introduced this legislation, she quickly pivoted after the election to oppose Labour’s Renters’ Rights Bill, which is very similar to the Conservatives’ Bill.

Speaking at the Bill’s Second Reading, she parroted the talking points of landlord lobby groups that the bill would reduce the availability of homes in the private rental sector, while failing to discuss where those homes would go.

This potential tilt away from renters’ rights was further reinforced by Badenoch’s pick for Shadow Housing Minister: Kevin Hollinrake. Hollinrake was founder and chair of Hunters’ estate agents until 2021, and was reported to have numbered among the opponents of his own government’s Renters’ Reform Bill in 2023.

Shifting right on housing delivery

Can building homes be left or right wing? Seemingly under Kemi Badenoch it can be, as housing has become part of her wider ideological conflict with the left.

This has manifested in her blaming left wing administrations in urban centres and the bureaucratic ‘deep state’ for a failure to build the homes we need.

The former continues a long-standing trend of Conservatives trying to disproportionately focus construction in urban areas.

This is for a brazenly political reason: Conservatives have long abandoned metropolitan voters and are happy to concentrate in these areas the disruption caused by building more homes. Accordingly, in 2021 they introduced a somewhat arbitrary 35% “urban uplift” to the 20 most densely populated towns and cities outside of London, and, in 2024 Michael Gove launched a review of Sadiq Khan’s London Plan as a way to criticise the mayor for failing to deliver enough homes.

Badenoch has also continued this tradition, attacking Khan on a similar basis in three of her eight speeches as Shadow Housing Minister.

Similarly, while Badenoch has made pleas to protect the green belt, she has simultaneously started to champion a deregulatory planning policy with measures to “roll back the environmental laws, the diversity and social requirements”, blaming the bureaucratic state for the failures to build more homes.

This is a disappointing hallmark of the Conservatives’ housing policy. While the party failed to meet their own housing targets, before ditching them entirely to appease ‘NIMBY’ backbenchers, their only real solution for the lack of delivery in urban areas has been, and continues to be under Badenoch, to blame local leaders.

Shifting right on migration

A further worrying trend of Badenoch’s tenure as Shadow Housing Minister has been a shift to blame migration for the increase in rent levels, stating that “The only way to improve the lives of [private renters] is to control immigration and build more homes, particularly in high-demand areas like Inner London.”

This is not a far cry from Reform UK’s dishonest blaming migrants for the lack of social housing. Unlike Reform’s argument, which is based purely on falsehood, there is some truth to the idea that any new entrants into the private rental sector will increase demand, whatever their country of origin.

However, this is only part of the picture. Migrants already have significant barriers to renting privately, including language barriers, difficulty finding guarantors, and Right to Rent checks, and so landlords when surveyed admit that they are less likely to rent to someone without a British passport. As a 2017 briefing from the House of Commons Library states:

“Research suggests that new migrants often enter the PRS in areas of low demand, filling less desirable property left by individuals moving into better housing. This may be because some groups of migrants only have access to low-paid or insecure work, but it also reflects variations in perceptions of standards and personal priorities.”

As John Perry notes, this also means that foreign nationals are more likely to live in sub-standard accommodation, the regulation of which Badenoch strongly opposes.

While Badenoch is still new in position, the direction of her housing policy so far demonstrates a concerning shift to the right, with renters, migrants and the environment thrown under the bus. This divisive rhetoric is simply a distillation of the arguments made by the Conservatives in government, and a worrying sign that Badenoch has learned little from the lessons of the past.

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Green populism will not solve the housing crisis

Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, co-leaders of the Green Party, with Elllie Chowns, Housing and communities spokesperson. Image by Bristol Green Party licensed under public domain

One notable moment from the 2024 general election was the surprise success of the Green Party. The party more than doubled their vote to 6.7 percent, with four MPs. This followed a string of successful local election results, which has brought the party a total of 813 councillors.

The party also came in second place in 40 seats in 2024, up from just three in 2019, and they are within a five point swing of an additional five MPs.

For a long time, the political world has treated the Greens as a curiosity with interesting but ‘out there’ ideas. But, as the party’s electoral strength builds, it is worth taking a serious look at their policy offer.

This is particularly important in the housing sector, where their proposals rely on a mix of populist myth-peddling and blunt tools to address one of the most complex crises facing the country.

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What do the Greens stand for?

On housing, the Green Party Manifesto in 2024 had four main priorities:

  • A Right Homes, Right Place, Right Price Charter with new regulations for housebuilding
  • Investing into decarbonising housing
  • Delivering 150,000 social homes per year through purchasing existing homes and building new ones, including ending the Right to Buy
  • Regulating the private rental sector by allowing local authorities to introduce rent controls, ending ‘no fault’ evictions and introducing private residential tenancy boards to resolve disputes

Many of these policies are sensible, and several are being implemented by the Labour Government, including investment into housing decarbonisation, restricting the Right to Buy, and ending Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions. But the sum of these policies, alongside the Green Party’s actions outside of their manifesto, presents a worrying package which could have unintended consequences.

Stymying delivery

One notable moment of the election campaign was the refusal by the Greens’ co-leader, Carla Denyer, to support a housing target, despite being pressed on this three times by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

This is particularly problematic given that many of the Green Party’s policies would make housing delivery harder. The Party’s ‘Right Homes etc… Charter’ includes making councils spread development over small sites, which would eliminate economies of scale by larger development. Likewise, a mandate of Passivhaus Standard on all new homes in this charter would put substantial additional costs on construction with few measurable benefits to the Future Homes Standard currently being introduced by the Government.

Government policy should, of course, promote higher regulations and help smaller builders to create a more diverse industry. But mandating these high bars is a blunt tool for a complex problem.

Similarly, while academics argue the definition and the merits of rent controls, it is relatively well-established that the sort of direct control on rent levels suggested by the Greens has a negative impact on housing supply.  

Combined with the well-publicised history of Green councillors and MPs opposing new housing in their area, this amounts to a concerted effort to stymy housing supply.

This was also shown in the one recent occasion of sustained Green Party control over a local authority when they led Brighton from 2011 – 2015. Data from the Housing Delivery Test show that, in the aftermath of this control, Brighton only managed to deliver 77% of the homes it needed in 2015 – 2018, well below the 130% average of local authorities nationally. Meanwhile, data from 2019 – 2022, after four years of Labour control, shows the council delivering 130% of the homes required by the Delivery Test.

While many on the left may not be concerned with overall housing delivery, since these are mostly market rate homes from private developers, building these homes is crucial. Not only will this have a positive impact on rent levels, but it will result in more social housing being built, since Section 106 contributions from developers are responsible for delivering nearly half of all affordable and social housing. More private homes is, for now at least, key to more social homes. 

Focusing on housing myths

Meanwhile, the Greens have often peddled myths and mistruths in order to avoid focusing on real solutions.

The party’s response to Labour’s announced planning reforms was a perfect encapsulation of this, as the Greens’ Co-leader, Adrian Ramsey, claimed that:

  • There were a million empty homes, only a quarter of these are actually long-term empty
  • There were a million homes with planning permission that developers were refusing to build while not a straight debunk, a report by the Competition and Markets Authority showed, while developers do engage in a degree of ‘land banking’, this is largely due to uncertainty of a steady supply of homes, a symptom of our broken planning system which Labour seeks to reform.
  • That developers intentionally build over-large ‘executive homes’ the average newbuild home is in fact 20% smaller than its counterpart from the 1950s.

Similarly, the Greens’ manifesto included a completely redundant pledge on making developers pay for local infrastructure, which they already do through Section 106.

This was also reflected in Denyer’s answer when quizzed in the aforementioned Laura Kenssberg, where she said:

“The problem is that in so many parts of the country what we’re seeing being built is not what people need. For example what we see are large, out-of-town developments of luxury, executive homes, 4, 5, 6 bed, double garage, and yet no bus service, no doctors or dentists, no more school places. And to be honest they’re not affordable to most of the people living in the area.”

That a key part of a national political party’s housing messaging contains such blatant myths is worrying, and an irresponsible injection into the political discourse.

The allure of populism

But why focus on these areas, rather than have a discussion about the solutions needed?

In part, it may be because the Greens know that their policy platform is not yet one for national government, and so is more of a political document. Rather than providing solutions, it is instead a powerful tool to point fingers and identify ‘baddies’ that their voters can rally against.

This is exactly what its manifesto seeks to do. By advocating for rent controls, impractical or redundant development standards, and action on empty homes, it implies that all of the faults of the housing crisis are down to its ‘villains’, greedy landlords, overseas buyers and corner-cutting developers, and that regulating their activity is all that is needed to fix it.

Opposition allows minor parties the luxury of an incoherent policy platform, but the Greens’ success merits them being taken more seriously. And by playing such obvious political games, they are taking their voters for fools.