Author: Red Brick

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Letters to the editor

Time to plan for the Budget in Autumn 2025

The dust is starting to settle on the 2024 Budget and if it’s possible to generalise across the spectrum of reactions, it’s probably “a good start but not enough to address even the most acute problems of poverty and inequality – there is still a long way to go”.

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There were welcome steps towards addressing wealth inequality with the changes to Capital Gains Tax and Inheritance tax, ending Non-Doms Status, VAT on private schools and increasing the tax on private jet travellers. We now need to call for all unearned wealth to be taxed at the same rate as earned income. We should also open a debate on how best to replace the regressive Council Tax with a fairer system.

The two main contenders are a Proportional Property Tax (PPT) and a Land Value Tax (LVT). Some favour PPT e.g. the IPPR and Fairer Share, while others such as Martin Wolf, Chief Economist at the Financial Times and the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham spell out the merits of LVT.

Importantly, the liability for payment of both these taxes lies with the owner not the tenant.

Labour Housing Group is well placed to promote this debate, raise awareness of the unfairness of Council Tax, and encourage the Government to initiate a public consultation in advance of the Budget in 2025.

Jacky Peacock, OBE, is the Chair of Advice for Renters and writes in a personal capacity.

Building the affordable homes we need

Dear Red Brick editors and readers,

I am not going to spend any time in this letter on why we desperately need more affordable homes. We are all aware of the statistics on housing waiting lists, levels of homelessness, children sharing beds with siblings, and the impact of housing costs within the cost-of-living crisis. That is why Labour’s manifesto was clear, “Labour will deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation”. So the simple question is how?

First, the Government needs to confirm a long term, 10-year, rent settlement for Registered Providers (social and affordable housing landlords).  Only then can they plan and borrow for investment. The immediate increase in borrowing capacity will free Registered Providers to bid on the heavily subsidised affordable housing provided by private developers through their s.106 planning obligations. At present, this is not happening. This limits not only the delivery of affordable housing, but that of private housing as well.  This is an urgent issue and needs to be resolved now.

Second, as the Government is proposing, it needs to urgently reform the planning system to ensure that all local authorities in the country have a plan to deliver the homes they need. By 2025, 78% of Local Authorities in England will not have an up-to-date Local Plan, and 38% will have a Plan that is 10 years old or more.  What does this mean for affordable housing delivery? A few extreme illustrations of authorities with high percentages of green belt and their record of affordable home building might help. York has not had a Local Plan since 1954 and built a total of 3,329 homes in the 5 years to 31 March 2022. However, after accounting for Right to Buy loses, only a net 9% of those homes were ‘affordable’. Brentwood, over the same period, delivered a total of 1,394 new homes of which a net 8% were affordable. There are more examples that could be given, but let us be clear that in these areas, and many more, local authorities are not meeting their total housing requirements and certainly are not delivering the affordable homes we so desperately need.

Third, within the planning reforms, government needs to over-emphasise the importance of affordable housing delivery while ensuring that planning authorities bring forward the right mix of sites. We all agree that brownfield sites should be considered as a priority for development, but in many locations outside of London, the costs — such as for remediation, and construction — of developing brownfield sites means that they do not deliver the expected and necessary levels of affordable housing. Take Birmingham, in that 5-year period I referred to above, a total of 17,800 new homes were built. Yet after Right to Buy Registered Providers lost a net 994 affordable homes from their stock. You need to ensure that there are enough sites, effectively green field (not to be confused with Green Belt, but perhaps those as well, certainly Grey Belt!), being developed that can deliver the targeted level of affordable housing. There need to be checks and balances to ensure that local authorities are doing this.

Fourth, social rent needs greater emphasis among affordable housing requirements. Definitions and emphasis changed under the previous Conservative administration. In 2012, they changed the emphasis in grant funding and financial policy away from social rent (those homes with rents set at around 50% of market rents) to affordable rent (around 80% of market rent) in an austerity measure to lessen funding of affordable housing. While affordable rent might address part of the need for affordable housing, it should only be viewed as a piece of a larger jigsaw. We need to bring back social rent within the delivery mix.  This change has been further accentuated by Right to Buy losses as I have illustrated above. There needs to be greater flexibility in what defines affordable housing, but one thing is surely clear, that social rent should begin to once again play a greater part in delivery in many areas.  When I started in development over 20 years ago, the starting point was that social rent formed a large percentage of the affordable housing s.106 obligation on sites. We need to return to a point where planning policy sets a minimum percentage of social rent within the affordable mix. We should also be willing to accept other forms of affordable housing such as discounted market sales or rent to buy. The need is not uniform across the country, just as development viabilities are not, so there needs to be greater flexibility as to what is accepted.

Finally, I would like to challenge the Treasury. Affordable housing delivery should be considered as an investment in national infrastructure. We spend £31bn annually on housing benefit. Surely, a logical case can be made to commence a programme of government-led investment in affordable housing without viewing it as current account expenditure of the nation. We will have an asset, we may eventually reduce our housing benefit bill, it will lead to benefits for the wider economy – health outcomes, educational outcomes, social and labour market mobility – it would aid economic growth, improving fairness and creating opportunity.    

With Labour’s attention on immediate planning reform, its focus on economic growth and delivering more homes of all tenures, and with a willing development industry ready to deliver, bridging the gap in affordable housing delivery is achievable.

Paul Brocklehurst is Chair of the Land, Planning and Development Federation

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What should be in the Labour Government’s NPPF?

New housing under construction by Sandy Millar is licensed under Unsplash

On 17 September, Labour Housing Group members and experts from across the housing sector met online to discuss what should be in the new Labour Government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

Russell Curtis, founding director of RCKa Architects, provided a review of the NPPF

What is the NPPF?

The NPPF sets out the UK Government’s planning policy for England and how they should be applied. In theory, regional, local and neighbourhood plans should be aligned with the NPPF. As of June 2024, only 22% of planning authorities have an up-to-date local plan.

The new Labour government has published an updated version of the NPPF in July 2024, including updating the ‘presumption in favour’ of sustainable development, and bringing in changes to housing need, housing land supply, and updates to the Green Belt, and removing the idea of ‘beauty’ from the NPPF.

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Housing need:

The new NPPF has a new “standard model” of housing targets, which significantly increased targets in many areas while decreasing them in a smaller number of areas, particularly inner urban boroughs. This is because of a change of focus to housing affordability and existing stock, rather than a focus on household projections which was how the previous NPPF calculated local targets.

Even with this adjustment, however, more urbanised areas have targets to achieve greater density than rural areas, and so fears that the new NPPF will ‘concrete over the countryside’ are unfounded.

The new NPPF also introduced a requirement for local authorities to have a 5-year land supply for housing, and reaffirms the government’s target of 1.5 million homes across five years.

Green belt:

The NPPF has aimed to increase housing delivery in green belt areas, which has produced some controversy. Russell downplayed these concerns, however, providing the example of Bassetlaw, which had a significant increase of its housing targets, but which would require a fraction of one percent of its total land to fulfil.

The NPPF includes a definition of ‘grey belt’ land, comprising of previously developed land in the green belt, or land which makes a limited contributed to the five Green Belt purposes. These five purposes are to:

  1. To check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas
  2. To prevent neighbouring towns from merging into one another
  3. To assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment
  4. To preserve the setting and special character of historic towns
  5. To assist in urban regeneration by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land

Russell made it clear that, even providing 1.5 million homes would not make a significant impact on the countryside as it is. The consultation on the NPPF will close at 11:45pm on 24th September.

Q&A for Russell:

How do we overcome the binary way of looking at planning to enable things to be built vs to stop things from being built?

People only interact with planning when it involves things being built around them. We need to encourage people to get more involved at the local plan-making stage. We need to make language around planning clearer so that is easier for people to get involved.

What should the NPPF say about empty homes, and how can planning help to produce homes which local people will be able to buy?

England has one of the lowest percentage of empty homes of comparable economies, and empty homes are necessary so that people can move around. While it is important to crack down on ‘deposit boxes in the sky’ the priority needs to be on housing delivery. This might not be a priority for the NPPF, but instead for local councils who can bring in policies which restrict empty homes.

How much can building on the grey belt help to meet the government’s housing targets?

One useful thing which the grey belt framing has done is to start to shift the conversation on the green belt, to make developing on less useful parts of it more possible. Research by Lichfields has shown that 15 – 20% of the green belt might meet Labour’s Grey Belt definition, this could be a significant area of land.

A lot of our eggs for housing delivery are in planning, what else is needed to hit 1.5 million homes in five years?

Planning has a lot to do with delivering new homes, as our existing planning system is too unpredictable. One reason that we have large volume housebuilders is that they can navigate the planning system, and it is harder for small developers. It will be very difficult to reach 1.5 million homes, and new towns in the countryside can only be part of that solution.

Roundtable discussion:

After Russell’s presentation, event attendees were able to contribute to the discussion in a roundtable discussion moderated by Alex Toal, Red Brick editor. A number of concerns were raised:

  • Viability: Even with a move to deliver more affordable housing, developers would be able to reduce this by citing viability. Increased costs of building add further challenges here. Participants favoured moves to reduce the factors of viability, and to tighten Section 106 rules to ensure that developers had to deliver on what they had promised.
  • Supporting the planning profession: Many people noted that local planning departments were suffering from particularly acute recruitment and retention issues, particularly after a decade of austerity. More needs to be done to ensure that planning officers are supported within local authorities and have more equivalent pay and conditions to their private sector counterparts.
  • Density: There were concerns from participants that increasing density targets, particularly in areas with less need for more homes like the North East, could be detrimental to existing residents, particularly if there were compromises of quality on the way.
  • Leaseholders and solar panels: One participant noted that freehold owners of blocks were allowed under permitted development rules to increase their blocks by two stories without planning permission. While this was no bad thing in itself, it did mean that leaseholders who might want to install solar panels on their roofs felt less able to do so, and that freeholders were less likely to allow this.
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Panel discussion

After this roundtable, Labour Housing Group Vice-Chair Heather Johnson chaired a panel discussion with Rachael Williamson, Head of Policy & External Affairs at the Chartered Institute of Housing, Tom Chance, Chief Executive of the Community Land Trusts, and Cllr Shama Tatler, Cabinet Member for Planning, Regeneration and Growth at the London Borough of Brent.

Rachael Williamson began by noting that, while planning is not the only thing needed to solve the housing crisis, it is an important starting point. The moves in the NPPF are positive, but more is needed to increase capacity in local planning authorities and to invest in building the homes required. Therefore the budget on 30th October and the following spending review will be crucial moments to deliver on housing.

Social housing needs to play a strong role being emphasised in housing policy, and affordable housing needs clearer definition tied with local income. With temporary accommodation on the rise, more needs to be done to factor this in to housing strategies more widely. The review of green belt land is welcome, and myth busting is needed. Widespread coverage of local plans is needed, and the government should also identify what land they have at their disposal to deliver housing.

Infrastructure is key to ensure that healthy places are created, with schools, healthcare and transport infrastructure in place from day one. Rachael concluded by noting that a positive vision for housing can be a key opportunity for the government to set some positive mood music, particularly as delivering change in the housing system will take some time.

Rachael is also looking ahead to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to see what vision the government will set, in addition to how existing planning rules will be enforced to ensure that homes are delivered as promised.

Tom Chance followed with a suggestion of how the government can support SMEs in delivering a more diverse house building industry. Community Land Trusts, which Tom represents, primarily focus on community-led social housing, but along with other forms of self-commissioned housing they only deliver six to seven percent of homes in the UK, compared to 40% in comparable European countries. Similarly, SMEs only deliver ten percent of housing in the UK, down from 40% in the 1980s.

The planning system is primarily geared towards volume housebuilders, which means that homes in the UK are built slower, to lower quality and at less affordable rates. However, the cost and complexity of applying for planning permission has increased over the years, so that it can cost as much as £150,000 to navigate the planning system to deliver even ten homes. Costs per home for a small builder are two to three times larger than for a volume builder due to economies of scale.

It can take years to navigate the planning system, often because of rules such as those around nutrient neutrality, which adds further costs due to delays. Finally, uncertainty adds further burdens; even when builders work closely with local authorities to create a proposal which suits the local area well, they are still at the whims of individual planning officers.

One thing which is positive in the NPPF is a policy that at least ten percent of housing should be built on small sites and local planning authorities should allocate land in accordance with this. However, even larger sites can be divided off into smaller sub-sites, to forgo the resource burdens of local authorities having to identify a larger number of smaller sites for building.

The Community Land Trusts Network is pushing for an exceptions policy by which sites providing 100% affordable housing to address local need would be able to achieve planning permission when other non-affordable sites would not, and at a lower land price. This already exists on rural sites, but not yet in towns and cities. Therefore there is still work to go on the NPPF to prioritise certain types of development over others, and to champion a wider diversity of housebuilding.

Shama Tatler finished off the presentations in the panel debate with the example of Brent’s housing needs. Since Liz Truss’ mini budget, the number of households going into temporary accommodation has significantly increased, with 120 to 150 households per week presenting as homeless to the council. Brent’s council housing waiting list has increased to 30,000 and an additional £16m have had to be dedicated to temporary accommodation.

The changes proposed within the NPPF will affect boroughs like Brent, which are already delivering significant quantities of housing, less than others. But policies are needed to support good development, such as ensuring that public sector partners provide infrastructure according to promised timelines. The Housing Delivery Test also needs looking at, since it currently falls with local authorities, who are only responsible for approving new homes, rather than the full delivery. Shortening planning consents from their existing timeline of four years, for instance, would help to ensure accountability.

Shama followed up with calling for more to be done to pair up housing with infrastructure delivery, going as far as to suggest the creation of a unified Department for Housing and Infrastructure, to ensure that new homes are well-provisioned.

On quality, a move needs to be made on building safety to move away from independent assessments and back into local authorities where there is an increased quality and consistency of building regulations. Often, safety and quality issues arise because assessments are being done by a third party rather than by local authorities who are more accountable for the buildings in question, and so moving this in-house would help.

Local authorities also need further resources, particularly after a decade of austerity where councils saw cuts of 60% of more. This not only impacts planning departments, but housing management departments, with Housing Revenue Accounts in substantial debt as a result of funding cuts.

The NPPF is a moment of opportunity and to be optimistic about what can be achieved, to start a discussion on what barriers can be removed from the planning system which will not compromise on home quality. Community involvement is key, but it needs to be done earlier at the local plan stage. Shama finished by calling for planning to be viewed as something positive, rather than necessarily a more oppositional system.

Thank you to our panellists for presenting on this topic, and to our audience for attending the event. 

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Election 2024: 8 Prospective MPs who will tackle the housing crisis

As the general election approaches, a new generation of MPs appears on the horizon to take the mantle of solving the country’s greatest crises.

Every new and returning Labour MP will bring a wealth of experience and specialisms to help in their area of interest, along with to represent their constituents more broadly. But we at Red Brick, and the broader Labour Housing Group, will be most focused on those new MPs who will be fighting on the front lines of the housing crisis.

Housing runs through the heart of the Labour movement, and it is no surprise that there are many qualified PPCs who have it in their DNA. This is by no means an exhaustive list of these, but below are some particular candidates that members of our Executive Committee are particularly excited about:

Sarah Sackman (testimonial written by Ross Houston)

Seat: Finchley and Golders Green

Previous MP: Mike Freer (stepping down in 2024)

Required swing to win: 9.7%

Former London LHG Exec member Sarah is a much-respected barrister specialising in planning and environmental law. She has acted for local authorities, NGOs such as Shelter and individuals fighting for better housing. Her proudest career achievement was winning in the High Court for the Foxhill Estate Residents Association – preventing the demolition of 500 council homes. Sarah also worked on No One Left Behind campaign in Boston, a housing campaign to keep people in their homes during the foreclosure crisis in 2010. She’s taught a class in planning and urban politics at LSE for the last 10 years.

Andrew Lewin (testimonial written by Alison Inman)

Seat: Welwyn Hatfield

Previous MP: Grant Shapps

Required swing to win: 10.4%

For a self-confessed housing geek like me Welwyn Hatfield is a fascinating battleground seat. Labour’s Andrew Lewin is taking on veteran Tory MP Grant Shapps. Shapps was the longest serving Housing Minister since Yvette Cooper and Andrew has spent the past seven years working for one of the country’s largest housing associations.

Housing needs to be at the top of the next Government’s to-do list, and we need MPs like Andrew who understand our complex housing system and how it does and doesn’t work. We need to hit the ground running on housing and Andrew is in a great position to help us do just that.

Satvir Kaur (testimonial written by Sheila Spencer)

Seat: Southampton Test  

Required swing to win: none

Previous MP: Alan Whitehead (standing down in 2024)

Satvir has lived in Southampton all her life. She grew up on free school meals, in a deprived part of the inner city. She began her working life in her family’s shop and market stalls.

As a Southampton councillor from 2011, housing portfolio holder and then as Leader from 2022-3, Satvir led on the city’s largest council home building programme and on community initiatives to tackle poverty. Now, as the candidate, building the homes needed is one of her priorities, knowing that too many young people and families are currently giving up hope of having their own home one day

Rachel Blake (testimonial written by Alex Toal)

Seat: Cities of London and Westminster

Required swing to win: 6.3%

Previous MP: Nickie Aiken (standing down in 2024)

Former LHG Vice-Chair Rachel Blake is perfectly positioned to tackle the housing crisis. With policy experience in HM Treasury and local government, securing funding and delivering programmes of investment in new and existing council homes, she is a passionate advocate for better housing, renters’ rights and leasehold reform, holding events about these issues across the constituency, which has disproportionately high numbers of households in these tenures.

Rachel is hoping to make history as Labour’s first ever MP in ‘Two Cities’, after Labour won the council in 2022 and the London Assembly West Central seat in 2024, and would be a powerful advocate for housing in the constituency.

Tracy Gilbert (testimonial written by Ross Houston)

Seat: Edinburgh North and Leith

Required swing to win: 10.9%

Previous MP: Deirdre Brock

Housing affordability is important to Tracy. She has direct experience as a former Housing Benefits Officer and has a long record as a campaigner and champion for her community. In 2023 Edinburgh’s Labour administration declared a housing emergency in a city with acute challenges with temporary accommodation, rising rents and homelessness. Edinburgh has the lowest proportion of homes for social rent in Scotland. Tracy is Regional Secretary for USDAW and has a proven track record negotiating pay rises across the public and private sectors. Ever more vital when dealing with pressures around the cost of living and housing for her members.

Jayne Kirkham (testimonial written by Sheila Spencer)

Seat: Truro and Falmouth

Required swing to win: 4%

Previous MP: Cherilyn Mackrory

Jayne Kirkham is Labour’s Group Leader at Cornwall Council, and a Falmouth town councillor. She worked as a Trade Union and Employment Rights solicitor, then volunteered for the local CAB and worked in a local school, so knows the challenges that working people face very well.

Jayne puts housing as her number one priority for Cornwall: finding truly affordable housing in Cornwall feels like such an intractable problem.  She has a record of pressuring both local and national government to see this for the housing emergency that it is in Truro & Falmouth.

Dan Tomlinson (testimonial written by Ross Houston)

Seat: Chipping Barnet

Required swing to win: 4.6%

Previous MP: Theresa Villers  

Dan grew up on free school meals and was homeless for a time as a child. As a new dad himself the lack of decent, sustainable and affordable housing is something very close to his heart. An experienced economist who started his career in HM Treasury, Dan currently works for the UK’s leading anti-poverty charity, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and is ideally placed to champion housing solutions.

He is passionate to see sustainable and genuinely affordable homes built, but crucially with a planning system which will promote our local economies and provide the needed infrastructure, such as GPs and schools.

David Smith (testimonial written by Sheila Spencer)

Seat: Northumberland North

Required swing to win: 16%

Previous MP: Anne-Marie Trevelyan

When David moved to the North East 16 years ago, he says it was very unusual to see anyone begging on the street. He was horrified that this became the new normal under the Tories. As a result, he became CEO of a homelessness charity working across the region, after working in international development. North Northumberland covers towns and villages from Morpeth to Berwick. David recognises that it needs real investment to properly “level-up”, including high quality social housing as well as much better transport infrastructure, high-skilled green jobs, and building bridges across divides.

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From promises to delivery – making Labour’s housing goals a reality

One of Labour’s most significant pledges ahead of the next general election is a promise to build 1.5 million homes over the next parliament. Doing so would go a significant way to tackling the housing crisis, particularly if such a level of construction were maintained in the long term.

However, this will be particularly difficult to do given the spending constraints which the party is also promising to maintain. At the recent Mais lecture, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves promised to only borrow to invest, and to maintain the Conservatives’ fiscal rule of ensuring that debt was on a track to fall after five years.

Speaking at Labour Housing Group’s 2024 Annual General Meeting, Toby Lloyd presented a roadmap for how this might be achieved. Toby is an independent housing consultant, formerly Head of Policy at Shelter, and advised the May government on housing issues, with previous experience as a policy advisor for local councils, housing associations, developers, and the Mayor of London.

Toby’s presentation covered a number of key themes on how Labour’s housing promises could be delivered while maintaining their fiscal rules:

Making the existing system work:

The 1.5 million home goal is ambitious – the last time that this was achieved in a five-year period was from 1968 – 1973. While tinkering with elements such as the planning system may be helpful, relying solely on this, or on any other tweak will get in the way of the need to deliver – a Labour Government will need to hit the ground running and work with the system as it is, at the same time as initiating more fundamental reform.

Ensuring committed money is spent:

Eye-catching sums of money committed for unlocking or building new housing have recently been returned to the Treasury. These include two thirds of the £4.2bn earmarked for the Housing Infrastructure Fund, and £255m allocated to building affordable homes.  

Part of the reason that these funds have not been spent is inflexibility on the Treasury’s part – rules set by them in how the money can be spent mean that inflation and viability changes can quickly scupper a project. Adding flexibility into how these funds are spent will not only unlock this money, but will be crucial to ensure that future pots does not face the same issues.

Encouraging diversity in housebuilding:

Part of accepting the reality of the existing situation is realising that private sector developers will continue to deliver the overwhelming majority of homes for the foreseeable future. However, with the market as weak as it currently is and land values likely to fall, there is less incentive for developers to build, rather than to withhold their land supply.

In the short run there will be opportunities to acquire stalled private schemes and convert them into affordable homes, while in the longer term decent funding social housebuilding will be a key to restoring diversity to the sector, so that councils, housing associations, small builders and community groups can all contribute. Not only will this be crucial for providing homes for those facing the most acute housing need and driving up quality, it also will help make the whole development system less vulnerable to market cycles and so raise overall housing supply.

Strategic planning:

While tinkering with the planning system will do limited good in the short term, reasserting the proactive state role in shaping the development system will be crucial to achieving the 1.5 million homes goal.

Key to this will be reinvigorating spatial planning, which the state has taken largely abandoned over the last 14 years. Implementing a national spatial plan which clearly identifies the locations for strategic growth, and delivering this in partnership with regional and local stakeholders, would give a greater degree of purpose to the planning system.

This will be particularly important for the delivery of New Towns, best devised as extensions to existing settlements such as the new Cambridge Urban Quarter. In order to deliver these, Development Corporations with Compulsory Purchase powers will be needed to ensure that land is acquired for a fair price.

Improving existing stock:

While building new homes is key, the number of existing dwellings which fail to meet quality and safety standards is a crisis in itself.

Funding is needed for a ‘Decent Homes Programme 2’, to upgrade existing stock to current energy efficiency and safety standards. This will have significant savings down the line from lower energy bills, improved health outcomes for residents, and a decrease in major safety risks.

However, the UK’s definition of fiscal debt is unusual in including the debt of public corporations, including councils borrowing to invest in housing stock. Changing the measure of public debt used for fiscal rules to exclude this ‘public corporation’ borrowing would remove incentives for the Treasury and local authorities to ignore this pressing need.

Q&A:

After his presentation, Toby answered several questions from Labour Housing Group members on a variety of topics including siloed thinking in government, ending homelessness, ensuring that homes with planning permission are built, and empty homes.

We are grateful to Toby for speaking at the AGM, and look forward to working with him further.