Red Brick, Author at Red Brick

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.

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.