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Will a new planning system magically create new housing?

Labour would make a great mistake if they think that the disquiet in the Tory shires about the Government’s proposed planning reforms – or the departure of Dominic Cummings – will sink the Planning White Paper.  Johnson has come out plainly saying he wants abolition of the present planning system, come what may – and we have to understand why so much political capital is invested in this.

Developers and landowners have made massive profits over the last 40 years.  Indeed the economy is largely built on this speculative success. So why get rid of something that works for them so well?  What exactly is the Government’s agenda, and what is Labour’s answer? 

The White Paper ‘Planning for the Future’, proposes not reform of the current system but total abolition of existing town and country planning legislation.  The replacement would be a US style ‘zoning system’ accompanied by high tech design codes.  Thus, if developers can tick the boxes on the zones and codes they get automatic consent.  Bingo. Communities and local councils are by-passed.

No more planning applications to be submitted and poured over by pesky planners and local communities – the landowners and housebuilders are free at last.  At least that is their dream – but things are more complicated than that, and the Tory record with planning makes them highly vulnerable to close examination.

The premise of the White Paper is that the housing crisis is caused by planners putting obstacles in the path of housebuilding companies and that a new planning system will remove these obstacles and magically there will be more housing – a view fuelled by the housebuilders lobby, the Home Builders Federation.  This part of the Government’s rationale does not stack up. The facts are that housebuilders have planning consents for 1 million homes and have not built them out.   To do so would bring down house prices and that is the last thing investors want.  The truth is that there is no evidence that the proposed reforms will deliver more homes.    

The reality is that the White Paper proposals are a tangled mess, and largely unworkable as explained in recent essays by a group of planning academics (including myself), ‘The Right Answers to the Right Questions’, ed. Andy Inch, 2020.  Nor are they what the volume housebuilders have been asking for.  They have been lobbying for measures to speed up planning decisions and make more housing land available, but they have not asked for legislation that is so wide ranging it may disrupt their highly profitable business model.

The White Paper proposals requiring councils to replace existing Local Plans with zones of Growth, Renewal, and Protect, plus algorithms for housing supply targets, and design codes – many dictated from Whitehall – are complicated and contentious to deliver in most urban areas and could engender even more NIMBYism and public cynicism.  The Tory shires are already voicing concerns about ‘Growth Zones’ and housing targets being imposed on their villages.     

So what lies behind the Tory aim of deleting current planning legislation?  It is ideology. The UK planning system is one of three remaining pillars of the post-war settlement, the others being the BBC and the NHS.  The Tories and their think-tanks have always regarded these pillars as ‘socialist’, or ‘welfare state’ measures. 

Town planning was enshrined in the foundational 1947 Town and Country Planning Act which was in its original purpose a socially redistributive mechanism to regulate development and distribute the profits from land development in a fair way – alongside providing a democratic framework for rebuilding towns and cities after the war. It was a force for good aimed at benefitting all classes and all regions.  Over years these principles were watered down but the essence of 1947 Act remains in all the succeeding planning legislation.  

The ideological Tories are not defensive about this intention, but where they are vulnerable is their collusion with the vested interests that have taken control of the planning system.   The landowners, developers and financiers who are the bedrock of funding and politics of the Tory Party have huge influence over the development of land and have creamed off the massive increase in land value created by the planning system.  

They are supported by a formidable property lobby that has been absorbed into Whitehall’s machinery. They do not intend to give up this privilege.  Communities, local councils and housing campaigns have become increasingly sidelined in the face of these interests, so well illustrated by Robert Jenrick’s shady dealings with a major developer and Tory donor  in the Isle of Dogs, and Boris Johnson’s blatant favours to developers when Mayor of London.  Meanwhile volume housebuilding has been commandeered by a small number of large developers who limit supply to keep up prices.   

Labour should be demanding full transparency and an end to housebuild cartels and cronyism.  If we have done our homework, this attack will have wide support.  The other part of our challenge is to be entirely positive about planning – placing it at the centre of a socially and economically just vision for the country.   Planning must be returned to public service, acting positively to care for the health of the people and the planet, to capture more land value for the community, and to widen planning democracy.

  

<span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color"><strong>Bob Colenutt</strong></span>
Bob Colenutt

Bob Colenutt is a member of Oxford Labour Party, a member of the Highbury Group, and author of ‘The Property Lobby’, published by Policy Press, 2020

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Does the housing sector hold the key to an improved electoral register?

As we all know, there are gaping holes in electoral registers in the UK, but it appears that it is not just in the United States that some right wing politicians seem to be happy about people being excluded from voting. A debate in the House of Commons in early November, during the discussion of the Parliamentary Constituencies Bill 2019-21, has highlighted this once again.

Following amendments made in the House of Lords, a majority of MPs sadly voted to reject the proposal to add 16-year-olds to the register, or to provide them with information on how to apply to join the register when they receive their National Insurance number.

Last November, just before the deadline to register for the 2019 General Election, the Electoral Commission revealed that between 8.3 million and 9.4 million eligible voters were not on the register from their current address; this is about 17%  – just under 1 in 5 – of the adult population.

We should be alarmed enough at that fact on its own, but other data published for 2018 shows that 1 in 4 Black and Asian people were not registered to vote, and nor were around 1 in 3 amongst 18-24 year olds. Furthermore, whilst almost 1 in 5 of social tenants were not registered, around 1 in 3 of private tenants were not on the list to vote. These are indeed shocking figures, and we really do need to take action to rectify this.

In part, this is due to the botched introduction of individual electoral registration made by the Coalition Government in 2014: against the advice of the Electoral Commission, instead of parents registering their adult children or institutional landlords like universities registering everyone in halls of residence, each person now has to register themselves, and must do so each time they move.

The change was rushed in without either electors or universities being given time to understand what the change meant. As a result, at least 600,000 voters vanished from the electoral roll, and a significant proportion of these have not yet been recovered.

While many universities have made efforts to encourage students to register, including information about registration in packs for first year students in halls or elsewhere, there are huge gaps in registrations for private tenants – both students and others – and particularly those in multi-occupied buildings where it can be hard for registration agents employed by local authorities to gain access.

Even without new legislation, it is arguable that local authorities could do more to encourage registration, for example using the contact they have with council tax payers, benefit claimants, parking permit users, blue badge holders, care users, and indeed, parents of school children.

But it is also possible for the housing sector to more do to help. Firstly, all councils, ALMOs and Housing Associations could make registering to vote easy for their tenants, getting people to sign an electoral registration form when they sign up for a new tenancy, and reminding them to re-register every time they move. Many housing organisations carry out programmed tenancy checks, often using electoral registers as part of the exercise, so they could easily contact and provide a prompt to all those not registered. At the very least, registering to vote should form part of every conversation with a new or relocating tenant, and at least once a year with all other tenants.

Secondly, information could be made available to housing staff, and to community organisations, particularly those working with tenants whose first language may not be English. They could explain who is allowed to register to vote and for which elections (it’s not entirely straightforward, as all Labour Party canvassers will know!), as well as the need for each individual to register and how to do it.

Thirdly, and very importantly, all support and care providers should ensure that their staff know how to help people register and how to vote. This should be part of the contract for every employee working with vulnerable residents, including helping them to access information about the candidates and the political parties they represent, and helping them to access the voting system, all of which can be done without displaying any political bias themselves. Coming across a resident who had wanted to vote but could not get to the polling station, fill in a ballot paper, or register to vote without help is amongst my least favourite experiences on Polling Day.

Finally, what can we do about private tenants, some of whom move every year as a result of Thatcher’s dismantling in 1988 of security of tenure in the private rented sector? It’s of course really a matter for Parliament to change the way that this is done: in Australia, individual voter registration has been in place for years, with voters staying on the register even if they move, with cross-referencing between multiple databases making it far less likely that people will be lost. In this country, the work has to be done by each council on a separate basis, with thousands of people coming off the register in each district every year, meaning a huge waste of resources.

Until we get a change to address this (and, my preferred option, to introduce compulsory registration) at national level, we have to rely on action at a local level. Private sector housing teams could ensure voter registration is mentioned at all meetings with landlords, even making it a requirement to issue an electoral registration form as part of landlord licensing and accreditation schemes.

The easiest solution to the unacceptable rate of electoral registration in the UK would be to automatically register people when they got their NI number, and require people to register each time they moved. But until we have a government that wants to make it as easy as possible for people to register, housing organisations which are in touch with a significant number of electors one way or another could take some responsibility for helping them to make their voices heard.

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Sheila Spencer</span></strong>
Sheila Spencer

Sheila has been Secretary of the Labour Housing Group (LHG) since 2018, having re-joined LHG Executive after a gap of many years.

She believes that housing is a critical issue across the country and that Labour has great housing policies – but many people, including many members, do not yet know how Labour intends to solve the current housing crisis when next in power.

Sheila wants to see Labour in the forefront of people’s minds when they consider what needs to change. She has worked all her life in housing – in the areas of homelessness, supported housing and housing need. Sheila was a city councillor in Newcastle and is now retired.

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The Return of Housing Regulation

From a Government that has until now been considered de-regulatory, we are now witnessing a return to housing regulation. But will it deliver the goods?

The aftermath of the Grenfell tragedy in 2017 has been far reaching. The Public Inquiry continues with revelations every week about the appalling practices in both the building industry and the procurement framework that led to the deaths of 72 people.[i] One outcome was the Government commitment to reform social housing and place tenants and residents at the centre of decision making around the management of their homes and the estates where they live. As a consequence the Government published a Green Paper one year after the fire proposing reforms to social housing to address some of the problems revealed by the Grenfell fire. [ii]   

Following the fire, the existing framework for regulating social housing was subject to savage criticism. Since 2010 the regulation of ‘consumer services’ had effectively been abandoned. Before the election in 2010, the Tenant Services Authority and the Audit Commission jointly regulated/inspected the housing services delivered by housing associations and local authorities under a regime designed by the Labour Government.  Research subsequently showed that the regulation/inspection of social housing in the 2000s significantly boosted performance in the sector.[iii]

But as the Coalition Government set about the ‘bonfire of quangos’ both the TSA and Audit Commission were abolished. The DCLG led by Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps took a contrary approach to Ministerial colleagues in the Education and Health Departments (taking two examples) where ‘consumer regulation’ was highly valued. Ofsted and CQC were seen as important parts of the Government armoury in education, health and social care. But consumer regulation was anathema to those running DCLG.

 Shapps actually wanted all formalhousing regulation abolished but the funders of housing associations (the banks and other finance institutions) fought hard to retain a regulatory regime that oversaw financial viability and governance.  After all, £100bn of private finance is invested in social housing provided by housing associations. And if you ran a finance house you would be foolish not to have the State carry out at least some of the checks of the bodies you fund. 

The regulation that remained after 2010 was transferred to the Homes and Communities Agency.  Consumer regulation was given a minor role in the new set up. And the hurdles erected to limit effective consumer regulation were high. For instance, ‘serious detriment’ had to be identified before any regulatory action could be taken by the HCA. And a ‘democratic filter’ was introduced to in effect stymie the efforts of tenants seeking to complain about their social housing landlords.

The 2018 Green Paper recognised the weaknesses of the regulatory framework for social housing with one section of the consultation paper calling for enhanced empowerment of residents and the strengthening of the regulator. Two years after the Green Paper was published, the social housing White Paper finally emerged this month (November 2020).[iv]  

Specifically looking at regulation, ‘The Charter for Social Housing Residents’ really does take us back to the position in 2010.[v] And in many ways the proposals significantly strengthen the regime that existed a decade ago. Points to note:

  • A major step forward sees all regulation of social housing placed under the auspices of one body – the Regulator of Social Housing; this finally realises one of the key ambitions of the seminal review of social housing regulation by Professor Martin Cave in 2007.[vi]
  • The return of service inspections. It is instructive to note that the ‘i’ word was used just once in the Green Paper of two years ago – and then, bizarrely, in relation to the assessment of the financial performance of housing associations. Inspection is the centre piece of the proposed regulatory framework.
  • An inevitable but welcome focus on health and safety.
  • A strengthening of the ties between the enhanced Housing Ombudsman Service (run by former Boris Johnson adviser Richard Blakeway) and the regulator.
  • A proposal to publish details about executive pay for housing associations (nothing that some association CEOs are paid over £400,000 a year).
  •  A strengthening of the enforcement powers available to the RSH including the introduction of unlimited fines for non compliance with the regulator’s standards.
  • A recognition that for-profit providers should be subject to greater scrutiny to prevent fraud and not claim housing benefit for their tenants when there is no entitlement.
  • A proposal to make housing associations subject to the Freedom of Information Act provisions that apply in the public sector (although this may founder given how this might threaten the private sector status of associations[vii]).

From a Government that is portrayed as de-regulatory, this revamped housing regulation framework is remarkable. Indeed you wonder how civil servants managed to persuade Robert Jenrick and his Ministerial colleagues to accept this much enhanced regulation regime. Those interested in improving the performance of social housing providers and ensuring those providers are fully accountable for their actions should welcome these changes.    Tenants in particular should relish the prospect of greater scrutiny of their landlords.  Certainly the Government appears to have rejected the siren voices from the larger housing associations in particular that have batted off tougher regulation in the past.  There is every prospect on this occasion that the regulator will not be subject to ‘professional capture’.

But there is a long way to go before the good intentions become a reality. Even if there is a fair wind it will be three/four years before the new regime is in place given the time needed to pass the necessary legislation and to set up the new arm of the RSH covering consumer regulation.  Funding may also be a problem as spending cuts are implemented to pay for the pandemic.

Even if the legislation is passed and monies found to pay for an enhanced RSH, tenants and others pushing for better performance by social housing providers need to ensure that a rigourous methodology is developed to inspect landlords in the new era. Inspecting largely from the user’s perspective is critical – a technique followed by the Audit Commission’s Housing Inspectorate from 2000 until 2010. Tenant Inspection Advisers must be involved in all inspections. Enforcement is key too. The RSH has been reluctant in the past to use its significant powers to bring back sliding providers to book.

And there are still gaps in the proposed regulatory framework. The current proposals do not cover the regulation of local authority strategic housing services such as homelessness or meeting housing needs.  And if we are seeking a true level playing field, perhaps the large providers of private rented housing – with over 1,000 homes, say – should be subject to regulation by the RSH.

Perhaps in another ten years…….

<span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color"><strong>Roger Jarman</strong></span>
Roger Jarman

Roger Jarman is an Associate with the Housing Quality Network where he provides consultancy services, leads training programmes and writes on housing regulation and other matters. He is also a Non Executive Director of two housing organisations.

From 1991 until 1999 he was Head of Housing Management at the Housing Corporation and then from 1999 until 2011 he was Head of Housing at the Audit Commission overseeing the 1400 housing inspections undertaken by the Commission during that period.  

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[i]   https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/

[ii]  https://www.gov.uk/government/news/social-housing-green-paper-a-new-deal-for-social-housing

[iii] https://www.ukhousingreview.org.uk/ukhr1011/index.html

[iv] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-charter-for-social-housing-residents-social-housing-white-paper

[v] Older readers will note the language used here as it echoes the Tenants’ Charter promoted by another Tory Government in the early 1980s.  

[vi] https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20070701140243/http://www.communities.gov.uk/pub/422/EveryTenantMattersAreviewofsocialhousingregulationReportbyProfessorMartinCave_id1511422.pdf

[vii] https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/statementsandletters/statementonclassificationofenglishhousingassociationsnovember2017

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Real Charity Starts with Homes for the Homeless

When is it appropriate for a charity to campaign for an unremarkable recent building to be listed, preventing more homes for the homeless?

On 10th September, Camden Council registered an application by HTA Design LLP, a firm of architects, planners and designers, for the Council’s own housing department to replace the hostel at 2 Chester Road near Archway with 50 new homes for homeless people and families.

Two months later the 20th Century Society, a registered charity, announced that it was supporting an application to Historic England for the Grade II listing of the existing hostel, built in 1979. A listing would prevent those new social homes being built.

Should this really be a listed building?
Source: Google Maps

The current hostel has little or no historic or architectural value, as London YIMBY, PricedOut and YIMBY Alliance explained in our joint submission to Historic England. It falls far below the thresholds to become a listed building.

The process to decide whether an historic building should be designated for listing is set out in the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. Applications to add, remove or amend an entry are made to Historic England, which then investigates the merits. To merit Grade II listed status under the Act, a building must have sufficient architectural or historic interest, but it falls far short on either of those measures.

A distinct lack of influential quality
Source: Google Maps

In 2012 English Heritage undertook a review of buildings of architectural merit and significance. 2 Chester Road did not meet the test to be included in its Heritage at Risk review then, and nothing has significantly changed since then to change that conclusion. 

The building is not a good example of the work of its architect, Sydney Cook, and the work of his Camden Borough Architect’s Department, for example in the buildings on Winscombe Street, with a characteristic way of responding to the form of surrounding terraced houses. The Chester Road hostel does the opposite.

Another dead frontage
Source: Google Maps

The building has dead walls and frontage around much of its perimeter, losing the historic double-sided street frontage and making the surrounding streets less friendly and welcoming. When the Dartmouth Park Conservation Area was appraised, the site received so little local support that the local conservation area assessment doesn’t mention the building at all. In a sea of green on the map of buildings that make a positive contribution to the conservation area, 2 Chester Road is just a blank space.

Site not considered to be a positive contribution to the area
Dartmouth Conservation Area | Green = Positive Contribution | Red = Site Location

The 20th Century Society’s response is that they would like the existing building preserved and re-used. ‘If a larger building is thought necessary’ to provide housing for homeless people, they say, ‘we would like to see 2 Chester Road converted to an alternative, socially beneficial use.’

But the problem is that – despite some people’s hand-waving assertions to the contrary – Camden has no other site for the 50 homes it wants to build for homeless families, nor the money to buy another site.  Charities have a duty to promote the public interest. That means trustees must be able to explain how the charity benefits the public by carrying out its purposes. It is hard to see how listing that 1970s building would ‘benefit the public’.

There is a general policy issue here because many charities, at one point or another, advocate positions that result in blocking more housing of one kind or another on various grounds. The 20th Century Society’s charitable purposes in its constitution include the objective ‘to save from needless destruction or disfigurement, buildings or groups of buildings, interiors and artefacts designed or constructed after 1914.’ (Emphasis added.)

That objective has no quality threshold. On its face, all post-1914 buildings are to be saved, however unimportant, ugly, unsustainable or unpopular. Are we to save a group of 1995 wheelie bins? They would technically qualify as a ‘group of … artefacts’. But there is one limit: the Society’s goal is only to defend against ‘needless’ damage.

No-one has suggested any specific alternative location or funding source for these homes in the real world. The only suggestions have been ‘somewhere else’. Presumably that does not mean the nearby Highgate Cemetery? Or perhaps Hampstead Heath? There is no green belt in Camden. Even if there were, someone would likely object to building on it, given the existence of an alternative site.

And if being homeless doesn’t qualify as ‘need’ , it’s hard to see what does. So building more homes for the homeless by replacing a building that does not meet the statutory tests for protection, when there is no realistic alternative site, is exactly the sort of thing charities should be campaigning for, when you consider the broader public interest test that charitable trustees are required to meet.

Some misleading environmental claims have also been made to try to block these new homes: claims that because the existing building has embodied carbon, we must not replace it.

You don’t get to just point to something you personally happen to like and shout ‘embodied carbon’ to stop it being changed. Real climate scientists look at what’s called the ‘counterfactual’. If we don’t build more with gentle density in places with good public transport where people can walk or cycle, people will end up building and living in remote but bigger houses with even more embodied carbon. That will be far away from densities where public transport is viable and so they will rely on model after model of car to get around, each with embodied carbon of its own.

The Royal Town Planning Institute helpfully spelled out the importance of walkable density – friendly streets where people can and do like to walk to meet their local needs – for reducing carbon emissions in its 2018 report.

Partly because of exactly this sort of misconceived objection to new homes, most of the homes we built in this country over the last few decades have been houses far from public transport, with people stuck in car dependent sprawl – when the slopes of prices and rents prove that many of those people would much rather live somewhere with better public transport.

So blocking these new homes where people can live sustainably, without needing a car, is profoundly damaging to the environment. By all means let’s get to standards that require full net zero demolition and construction as quickly as possible. But we won’t reduce carbon emissions in the meantime by pushing new homes out to areas of car-dependent sprawl. That would be the ultimate result of listing 2 Chester Road.

The most environmentally friendly thing is to reuse the materials and the embedded carbon of existing buildings to build better places and more and better homes near to public transport, with popular gentle density that will help the environment, make better bus services economic, and help to support local shops and high streets. To claim otherwise is just greenwash.

Listing the Chester Road hostel would harm some of the most disadvantaged groups in society. It would result in increased inequality, more homelessness, and further environmental damage. Charities should not be campaigning for that.

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">John Myers</span></strong>
John Myers

John Myers is co-founder of London YIMBY and YIMBY Alliance, which campaign to end the housing crisis with the support of local people.

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Building the New Jerusalem – How Attlee’s Government built 1 Million New Homes

Everyone knows that Clement Attlee’s 1945-1951 Labour Governments created the NHS, brought the coal mines and railways in to public ownership and gave India and Pakistan independence. But one of Attlee’s lesser celebrated achievements was building one million new homes at a time when building materials were in short supply and when the construction labour force was reduced to a third of its pre-war size.

From a slow start in 1945 -1947, new housing completions averaged around 200,000 a year for the next four years from 1948 -1951. By 1951, a total of 1,016,349 new homes were built, of which 806,857 were new Council houses. On top of that, 156,623 ‘prefabs’ were built, many of which provided decent and much-loved homes for many years to come. In addition, hundreds of thousands of existing homes were repaired and converted in the six years after the war.

Michael Foot rightly claims, “This achievement was no small one in the first years after the war when the country was also engaged in a big factory-building programme. It far surpassed anything achieved in Britain after 1918 or in most countries after 1945”.

However, despite the heroic efforts of Aneurin Bevan and his colleagues, more could have been achieved had Labour stuck to its Manifesto commitment and created a separate Ministry of Housing and Town Planning. Attlee gave Bevan the job of ‘slaying’ two of Beveridge’s ‘five giants’ – Squalor (caused by poor housing) and Disease (caused by inadequate health care provision). As Nick Thomas-Symonds argues:

“Having the same Cabinet minister responsible for both the creation of the NHS and housing the nation after the destruction of the Second World War was more than overload. It left Bevan to deal with the intricacies of both sides of his department when either half in itself would have been too much for a single minister.”

Should the housing building programme have been led by a ‘National Housing Corporation’, as Douglas Jay had recommended in the first few months of the Government, rather than by the local authorities, many of which had little experience of building new homes at scale.

Certainly, a national organisation with regional offices would have made planning, direction and control easier, but it could also have taken some time to establish. By harnessing the experience of the big city housing departments in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Glasgow, which had been building new out-of-town estates for over a decade and more, Bevan was able to combine real expertise with local knowledge.

The downside was that outside the big cities, experience was strictly limited with many local councils simply unable to move quickly. Overall, perhaps a key factor in this debate is that, six years later, Harold Macmillan was able to build 300,000 houses a year based on the same local authority ‘delivery system’ established by Bevan.

Should Labour have been more pragmatic and built more homes at lower standards, as Macmillan did during the 1950s? The average new three-bedroom Council house increased in size, from 860 square feet in the pre-war period, to 1,026 square feet in 1946, to 1,055 square feet in 1949, falling back to 1,032 square feet in 1951 and down to 947 square feet in 1952.

By 1959, the average size of a three-bedroom Council house had fallen to 897 square feet. Bevan was surely correct to increase space standards, remaking famously in Margate on 22nd May 1947, “We shall be judged for a year or two by the number of houses we build. We shall be judged in ten years’ time by the type of houses we build”.

There is little doubt that the new, larger Council houses built in the years immediately following the Second World War were some of the best ever built and have stood the test of time. In 1950, the first four blocks completed on the Churchill Gardens estate in Pimlico won Festival of Britain Architectural Awards. It wasn’t just the architectural critics who praised the flats. In 1962, tenants in the ‘posh’ private flats in Dolphin Square next door opposed a rent rise arguing, that “many of the flats are not as nice as those put up by the Council in Churchill Gardens opposite”.

Other post-war estates were similarly feted. In 1998, English Heritage listed the Spa Green estate in Finsbury as Grade II*. The Survey of London describes the Spa Green Estate as ‘heroic’. Nikolaus Pevsner called it ‘the most innovative public housing’ of its time.

Perhaps where Labour’s lofty ambitions most obviously failed was in the goal to create new communities where the ‘spirit of companionship’ would flourish and “wartime sentiments of social solidarity and shared purpose could be maintained and strengthened in the post-war world”. Aneurin Bevan harked back to the time where “the doctor, the grocer, the butcher and the farm labourer all lived in the same street”.

Similarly, Lewis Silkin’s ambition that class distinctions would fade away in the New Towns was never achieved. He hoped that “different income groups living in the new towns will not be segregated” and that after attending a town centre event, “When they leave to go home I do not want to see the better-off people to go to the right and the less well-off to go to the left. I want them to ask each other, ‘Are you going my way?’”.

There can be no denying Labour’s fundamental achievement to meet the aspiration of very many working class families to live in high quality affordable housing – which the Conservatives followed with great success over the next 13 years. The lives of so many working class families – who had been ignored by every previous Government – were transformed for the better.

As the historian Kenneth Morgan so clearly concludes:

“The rehousing of several million people in new or renovated houses, at a time of extreme social and economic dislocation, was a considerable achievement. Housing, therefore, deserves its honoured role in the saga of Labour’s welfare state.”

His book, ‘Building the New Jerusalem: How Attlee’s Government Built 1 Million New Homes’, is available in paperback and Kindle https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08N1H3PYL

All royalties will be donated to Foodbanks in Westminster.

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Paul Dimoldenberg</span></strong>
Paul Dimoldenberg

Paul Dimoldenberg was first elected to Westminster City Council in 1982. He was Leader of the Labour Opposition Group from 1987-1990 and from 2004-2015.

He is the author of ‘The Westminster Whistleblowers’, published by Politicos in 2006, which tells the story of the Westminster ‘Homes for Votes’ scandal of the 1980s and 1990s. He also has recently published Cheer Churchill. Vote Labour.

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A wink and a nudge to corruption in our planning system

What do bribery, conflicts of interest, opaque lobbying, weak oversight, curiously timed donations, excessive hospitality, and the revolving door all have in common? They are all corruption risks inherent within our discretionary planning system.  

We should be worrying about the findings made by anti-corruption organisation Transparency International, who found many local authorities lack the necessary safeguards to prevent corruption in our planning system. This begs the question – why is the left not demanding more from planning reform?

‘Permission Accomplished‘ shows us why because of corruption we should be sleeping with one eye open

Discretion, as opposed to rules, is arguably at the heart of our planning system. This creates inherent risks within the framework designed to provide democratic oversight to the development of our built environment. Not one of the responses to the Planning for the Future consultation made available to date, nor the Select Committee, have focused on the need for planning reform to combat corruption.

The definition of corruption according to Transparency International is “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain”. Corruption can come in many forms. It can be in the form of political donations to local branches of a political party around the same time as a planning application. Or it could be payments for the tuition fees of local councillors’ children.

There have been some high-profile cases in the past few years that have shed light on the flaws of our planning system. Transparency International case studied many of these in their report ‘Permission Accomplished’. By way of example, the report includes an investigation in Liverpool by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) involving multi-million-pound developments where no minutes of meetings between developer, councils, and officials had taken place.

Assessing corruption risks requires us to look closely at how it occurs in the first place

A case study covered in the report looked at how a Conservative Chair of a London planning committee had become embroiled in allegations of impropriety. He was receiving excessive gifts that had not always been declared. By March 2018, following media pressure, the local councillor had referred himself to the Monitoring Officer. His self-referral warranted formal investigation.

The Investigating Officer found the volume and frequency of hospitality and gifts declared by the individual as “extraordinary”. Important to note that no evidence proved the hospitality had influenced any planning decisions. However, the council did find the actions breached their code of conduct.

Another case study in the report highlighted findings from an investigation by The Daily Telegraph. A Liberal Democrat councillor employed by a public affairs company was said to be using a range of lobbying tactics to secure planning consents for their clients. The councillor told the Daily Telegraph that the firm employed numerous former or present councillors at any given time.

If other councillors refused to talk to lobbyists about a particular planning permission certain ‘tricks of the trade’ could be used to get around this. For example, he claimed he could use contacts to try and replace difficult councillors on local authorities’ planning committees, with more agreeable ones to help secure permissions for clients.

We cannot expect every local authority leader to be followed by the eyes of Argus

Shortly after the Independent Mayor of Tower Hamlets was removed from office for election fraud, a fixer was recorded allegedly requesting a £2m bribe for four incumbent councillors. In addition, the individual allegedly also requested a £15,000 a month retainer for high-end hospitality from a developer seeking planning permission.

Below is an excerpt from a recording produced by the Sunday Times back in December 2017, having regard to an ongoing case noted in Permission Accomplished. The recording demonstrates the inherent weakness and lack of democratic oversight systemic within highly discretionary English planning system.

“We are lobbying certain members to try and approve this development. But of course, then there is the additional bit that we will be doing behind the scenes, and this is where the premium covers that.”

“The site doesn’t have planning on it. As soon as you buy, your team will have to put the application in, and the gatekeepers will bless it. End of.”

“Well it’s the elected members. Politicians that have a show of hands. You have seven people, in this case about seven. If you take out the deputy it is six key votes, six elected members, members that have been elected by people, by the public, they make the final decision”

Sunday Times Recording, December 2017

Labour Mayor John Biggs, who ran on an anti-corruption ticket, called in accountancy firm Ernst and Young to undertake a full and independent investigation of the developer’s claims of corruption. Since becoming Mayor, Biggs says he has fought hard to clean up the borough, and to tackle the corruption and wrongdoing of the past.

The whistle blowers’ allegations of bribery in connection with a planning application was swiftly considered by a Queen’s Counsel (QC) experienced in addressing bribery and corruption cases. Following the QC’s advice, the Chief Executive reported the allegations to the Serious Fraud Office. The case has since been referred to the National Crime Agency where it remains still under investigation.

Panelisation of planning decision-making removes consenting authority of councillors in beady-eyed Australia

In some places in Australia, legislation removes councillors from exercising any consent authority functions. Instead Australia in many places constitutes mandatory local planning panels, namely under the Planning Panels Act 2018. Mandatory local panels were argued to “bring expertise, transparency, and integrity” to the process of assessing planning applications. Planning authorities across Australia had exemplified the use of local planning panels from as far back as 1997.

Local planning panels have become a more conducive structure for development and industry in Australia. In particular following the success of Joint Regional Planning Panel (JRPP) introduced in 2009. These regional panels would be responsible for developments more than $20 million capital value. In effect removing local councillors from the decision-making process. This instead favours an independent decision-making body for regionally significant development applications, significantly reducing the risk of corruption.

Research reveals local authorities lack twenty-twenty vision over corruption risks

In their report Transparency International assessed 50 of 317 local authorities across the countries that have planning responsibilities in England. It found 32 councillors across 24 authorities holding critical decision-making positions in their local planning system, while at the same time also working for or on behalf of developers. This poses the question are we electing local representatives or political lobbyists?

Transparency International assessed how each local authority prevents, protects, and pursued corruption in planning decisions by local councillors. In it they judged these authorities against best practice standards. Developed by Transport International, and using evidence from their research, they built on existing work by the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CPSL) and the Local Government Association (LGA).

Local authorities were scored between zero and 100. 100 being seen to meet good practice. By this measure, not a single local authority taken from the 15 per cent sample demonstrated either a top or second quintile performance. This suggests local authorities are leaving themselves open to serious allegations of improper conduct by democratically elected representatives.

@TransparencyUK found many local authorities lack sufficient safeguards to prevent corruption. Labour should be demanding more from planning reform.

The corneal erosion of institutional checks and balances make the planning system fertile ground for abuse

The report found inadequate oversight to ensure probity in the planning process. It went insofar as to highlight major corruption risks relating to councillors’ involvement in planning decisions in the current system. Low levels of transparency, poor external scrutiny, networks of cronyism, reluctance or lack of resource to investigate alleged wrongdoings, and the sums of money involved provide a fertile environment for those entrusted to make planning decisions abuse it for private gain.

We have seen an erosion of institutional checks and balances on this behaviour. Independent audits of local authorities have been abolished. A universal code of conduct for councillors abandoned for local defined standard. All in combination with the capacity of our media having been watered down. Labour needs to continue picking up the mantle in tackling corruption, as has been the case lately following calls for tougher regulation of suspected money-laundering activities.

Lines between lobbyists and elected local representatives remain terribly blurred

Bob Colenutt, in his book ‘The Property Lobby: The Hidden Reality Behind the Housing Crisis’, makes a good point. He highlights to us the revolving door between local authorities, consultants, and developers is of equal importance to developers lobbying government . Many councillors have second jobs working as lobbyists and advisers to developers and housing associations. Often working in their own or adjoining areas.

Bob pointed to the case of Southwark in 2017. Here 20 per cent of the local authority’s 62 councillors were employed as lobbyists. Almost one in ten councillors in London either work for a property business or have received hospitality from them. Nearly 100 councillors have links to property companies or lobbying and ‘communications’ consultancies involved in planning.

The local councillor is a denizen of the English planning system. It is the discretion of these individuals over decisions that shape our built environment. Is it just a coincidence that our democratic planning system encourages so many councillors to work in lobbying for developers. Or does this need to change?

Local authorities can be more eagle-eyed if they reinforce recommended guidance and best practice

We need to increase transparency, tighten rules to protect the planning process from abuse for personal gain, and to strengthen oversight over councillors to deter behaviour that would bring the integrity of the planning process into question. Transparency International made the following ten recommendations:

  1. Minute and publish all meetings with developers and their agents for major developments
  2. Prohibit those involved in making planning decisions from accepting gifts and hospitality that risk undermining the integrity of the planning process
  3. Increase transparency over gifts and hospitality
  4. Stronger leadership from the industry on ethical lobbying
  5. Improved management of financial interests, which include the repeal of Section 31 of the Localism Act
    • To be replaced with a new requirement removing councillors from decisions where it can be reasonably regarded that they hold a significant conflict of interest that could prejudice their judgement
  6. Prohibit all councillors from undertaking lobbying or advisory work relating to their duties on behalf of clients
    • This should prohibit members from lobbying councils on behalf of paying clients
    • Prevent councillors from providing paid advice on how to influence councils
  7. Manage the revolving door between elective office and private business
    • Prohibit those who have recently worked as lobbyists for developers from sitting on planning committees
    • Or receiving executive responsibilities relating to planning
  8. Provide clear guidance and boundaries for councillors so they can better understand what is and is not acceptable behaviour
  9. Provide a meaningful deterrent for serious breaches of the code
  10. Increase transparency over investigations and enforcement actions

Transparency International’s report raises yet again alarm bells about risks that remain very real. Sadly, local authorities still remain ill-prepared to address them. Labour should give these anti-corruption recommendations serious consideration, put anti-corruption at the heart of its agenda, particularly when it comes to planning reform.

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Christopher Worrall</span></strong>
Christopher Worrall

Editor of Red Brick. He currently works in land acquisition for Guild Living. Chris currently sits as a Non-Executive Director of Housing for Women and is a member of the Labour Housing Group Executive Committee.

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Tackling the Environmental & Housing Crisis: The Case for Green Homes

Coronavirus has upended everything. Within the space of a week in the spring, the pandemic has taken centre-stage in our social and political lives and has remained there, immovable, ever since. So interwoven into the experience of everyday life has the virus become, it sometimes feels difficult to think about much else.

In many ways it’s absolutely right that our attention should be so fully devoted to discussing covid-19 and, in particular, how to contain it. Bearing down on the spread of the virus to protect life and jobs is arguably the single biggest challenge the country and the world has faced since WW2.

But there are two additional crises that lurk not far into the horizon. In fact they are already here. These are the dual threats of the housing crisis on the one hand, and environmental collapse on the other. As scientists have evidenced, the latter creates the conditions for viruses like covid-19 and others to spread in the first place.

Left unchecked these twin crises will get worse and spin out of control.

Just consider this. It’s possible that environmental degradation could lead our planet close to becoming uninhabitable by the end of the century. The destruction of nature isn’t just about climate change — undoubtedly an existential risk and one that has received a lot of attention since last year. It’s also about extreme biodiversity loss and a rapid decrease of land and soil productivity — two issues which get too little attention and which, in the words of the UN, are “eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”

On the other hand, the collapse of affordable housing has proved a disaster for many and may get worse. Home-ownership is out of reach for a generation of young people, in parts of the country average rent equates to three-quarters of median pay, and tens of thousands of families live in insecure temporary accommodation. Without access to a place people can reliably call home, the foundations of democratic norms — norms which rely on basic levels of socio-economic security for all — are at risk.

But this needn’t be our fate. We can carve out a different future, one where we provide housing security for everyone and safeguard nature at the same time. Doing this requires implementing a wide range of governmental interventions and creating market conditions which favour people and the planet above unbridled profit. But there is one policy area where we can begin to tackle both crises at once — and that’s unlocking the potential for environmentally friendly housing while making housing genuinely affordable.

So how do we do it?

Change begins with shifting how we think about housing. Much of the debate frames environmental protection and boosting housing supply through the prism of trade-offs: we sacrifice the former for the latter (or the reverse), say by building on the green belt (or choosing not to). But new-build and enhancing environmental protections can be two sides of the same coin.

Indeed, innovation and policy change is already moving us in that direction. Some developers are incorporating enhancements to ecosystems within their developments, like increasing beehives and bird boxes in urban settings. In parallel, bodies like the London Assembly champion ideas to nudge or require developers to think green — like incorporating requirements for minimal ‘green space factors’ into planning and recognising innovative ideas through award schemes.

In addition, the more we can transform the infrastructure that neighbourhoods rely on towards sustainable ends, the more we can move in this direction. For instance, we must ensure transport links are green — whether it’s by prioritising walking and cycling links above roads, and when roads are necessary ensuring they’re used by electric cars, not gas-guzzling vehicles.

A second step lies in pushing back on historic, out-dated practices in the development industry. At the forefront of this change is challenging a de facto presumption in favour of demolition. Demolition is massively wasteful — in the UK alone, the construction industry accounts for 60% all materials used. In addition, the development industry accounts for 45% of carbon emissions, and when demolition happens it releases huge amounts of “embodied carbon”. The alternative should be a presumption in favour of refurbishment with demolition there as a genuine last resort.

It is possible to refurbish whilst unlocking affordable housing. The long-term consequences of covid are likely to be empty office buildings in the centre of cities, as white-collar workers shift to working from home on a more regular basis. Local and regional leaders must therefore find ways of bringing back empty premises into use as affordable and quality housing. We’ve already seen councils take similar steps to revitalise centre city living when perceived urban decay has been a challenge in the past.

In cities like Liverpool city centre, living increased by 181% from 2002 and 2015, whilst in Birmingham it increased by 163%, and these changes were a result of proactive policy interventions. Living in these areas is now associated with a good quality of life, in effect embracing the Mayor of Paris’ 15 minute living concept where everything one would need (whether it’s access to gyms, restaurants, the supermarket, or schools) is within close walking distance.

A third move is embedding the circular economy into any new affordable housing development. From deploying renewable energy sources, like heat pumps and solar, through to releasing more subsidies for insulating homes, change is well under-way on this front. The shift needs to be coupled with sustainably disposing of waste and in particular food waste — an issue that lies behind a whopping 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

What this means is getting people to waste less food in the first place, and when waste is inevitable making sure it’s composted or ends up in anaerobic digestion plants not landfill or being incinerated. Crucially, using resources intelligently helps with the affordability of living expenses. Cutting fuel bills can lead to hundreds of pounds in household savings, whilst eating not wasting edible food can save the average household £500 per year.

These are just some changes that we can make to marry the need for genuinely affordable housing with sustainability. What’s outlined above does not negate how difficult achieving the scale of transformation we need to see will be. But the urgency with which we increasingly understand the environmental crisis, coupled with new technological opportunities, means citizens, policy-makers and developers are very clearly beginning to envision and see the opportunity to build another future.

This week Labour challenged the government to ‘Build it in Britain’ and support the creation of 400,000 jobs, including in the crucial manufacturing sector, through a green recovery from the Covid crisis. Action now would support the creation of new jobs and tackle the climate and environmental crisis, and includes expanding energy efficiency and retrofit programmes, including in social housing.

For too long we’ve negated people’s right to secure housing whilst undermining the natural world. Covid-19 is undoubtedly the biggest short challenge facing us, but we need to walk and chew gum at the same time, keeping focused on tackling the twin threats of insecure housing and environmental breakdown.

The moment for change is now.

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Pancho Lewis</span></strong>
Pancho Lewis

Pancho Lewis is a Westminster Councillor, where he is Shadow Cabinet Member for Environment, and works for the food waste start-up Too Good To Go.

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The role of Government grants for affordable housing provision

Those on lowest incomes face rising costs without new provision, long-term grant funding for new homes is needed now more than ever.

The rising inequalities associated with the lack of affordable housing are becoming hard to ignore. Whether a tenant or a homeowner, housing expenses take up a large part of household’s earning each month and hence the pressure rises on political leaders to do something about it.

The latest ONS data[1] reports that “households whose income is in the bottom 10% could expect to spend more than two years of disposable income on the upfront costs of an average house in London, the South East and the East of England” and “could expect to spend more than 70% of disposable household income on mortgage repayments for an average property in England”. On the rental market, households in the bottom 25% of the income distribution could expect to pay more than 30% of their income on the cost of renting an average property.

Double or quits report highlights the need for long-term grant funding

Building housing that is affordable is not straight forward. As with other types of social infrastructure, positive externalities may be hard to capture, and this justifies government subsidies into the supply of affordable housing. Government grant is essential to incentivise the provision of affordable housing tenures.

Since the introduction of the Housing Act 1988, the Government has largely provided grant on a short-term basis, mostly aligned with the political cycle. This short-term approach to grant funding leads to high levels of uncertainty and cyclicity on the housing market. I highlight this in a recent report called Double or Quits: The influence of longer-term grant funding on affordable housing supply. It was commissioned by the Consortium of Associations in the South East (CASE)[2], The National Housing Federation[3] and Shelter.

The report finds that extending the length of capital grant, all else equal, would add certainty in the development process and reduce development cycles. This in turn may lead to more housing provision.

Grant funded affordable housing has been on a downward trend

Double or quits starts off by conducting an extensive overview of the grant arrangements and outputs over the last three decades. Up until the late 1980s, local authorities were the main provider of affordable rental accommodation, when grant for affordable housing took a downward trend[S1] .
In the last three decades, housing associations, or so-called registered providers (RPs), have been the main players in the affordable housing provision. RPs use capital grant to bridge the shortfall between the total cost of construction including private borrowing costs and revenues from the, so called, cross-subsidy[4].

The Affordable Homes Programme (AHP), which has been the primary mechanism by which Government has funded new affordable homes since 2011, has provided funding on a three- to five-year basis. Table 1 shows the various capital grant schemes available since 1991. Each colour represents a grant cycle – from the beginning of the grant to its expiry. It is clear that towards the end of each grant programme, the output increases as the grant has to be spent by the cut-off date. 

Figure 1: Private Registered Providers’ Homes England / GLA funded affordable completions

Source: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), 2020.

Development for social rent has been on a rapid decline since 2011

Affordable housing completions can be subdivided into four main tenures, as defined by the government, social rent, affordable rent, shared ownership and intermediate rent. Figure 2 shows the affordable housing completions by tenure for England between 1991 and 2019. 2010-2011 marks an important shift in the provision of affordable housing with the introduction of a new tenure – affordable rent. Completions of social rent have rapidly declined since 2011, from around 40,000 units per year to less than 10,000.

They have been replaced by a new tenure[S2] . While the average grant per dwelling has been around £50,000 between 2006 and 2011, covering about 40% of total construction costs, it has dropped by more than half between 2011 and 2018. That led to housing associations delivering from around 50,000 social rent and shared ownership units in 2011 to less than 6,000 in 2019. The latest figures by the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government report total affordable housing completions of 57,185 as of the end of 2019, half of which are affordable rent.

Figure 2: Affordable Housing Completions by Tenure for England

Source: MHCLG, 2020.

Significant rise through developer contributions obtained through Section 106 Agreements

Since around the same time as the decline in social rent completions, most of which are delivered by housing associations, in 2011, there has been a huge rise in the share of completions associated with Section 106 (S-106) planning agreements. This is evident in Figure 3 below.

Planning obligations under Section 106 were introduced in the Town and Country Planning Act of 1990. They are ‘developer contributions’, similar to highway contributions and the Community Infrastructure Levy, partially provided for affordable housing. This means that there has been a shift in the sourcing of funds for affordable housing provision. Now, only about 50% of the funds come from the grant provided by Homes England (HE) and Greater London Authority (GLA).

The reliance on private development to deliver affordable housing through S-106 contribution has been greater than ever. This has been enabled through the substitution of social rent by affordable rent and shared ownership. The striking picture depicted in Figure 3 makes clear the direct positive relationship between affordable housing supply and market housing supply. If, following a slow-down in economic growth, development activity drops by, i.e. 30%, the provision of shared ownership and affordable rent may drop by a similar proportion, since 30% less S-106 provisions may be made.   

Figure 3: Share of Completions by Tenure as Part of Section 106 (S106) Agreements

Source: MHCLG, 2020. Data for England.

Lack of predictability of grant big issue say developing housing associations

Given the trends described above and the reliance on the market to supply affordable housing, the report goes on to investigate how increasing the length of the housing grant to 10 years could affect the provision of affordable housing by conducting structured interviews with 13 Chief Executives or development directors of housing associations.

The lack of predictability in grant provision may lead to a more cautious approach by housing associations when it comes to building their development pipelines and limit the number of affordable homes they deliver. The pronounced peaks and troughs in delivery associated with the short grant cycles, with completions skewed towards the end of Programmes, have knock-on consequences for development costs, build-quality and the productivity of the housebuilding industry.

The report finds that a ten-year Affordable Homes Programmes would enable housing associations to purchase more sites without planning permission and take on larger and more complex sites. This may lead to reducing overall construction costs and passing the savings on to the homeowners or tenants.

Land-led development by housing associations would become more prevalent

Housing associations will be more likely to invest in their in-house development teams and intensify relationships with private developers, house builders, land managers and local authorities, including through joint ventures. This can lead to consolidation on the market and economies of scale in the production of new affordable housing.

Furthermore, a move to long-term funding would also increase housing associations’ ability to fulfil deliver affordable housing counter-cyclically. It would do so by accelerating the trend for greater levels of land-led development, whereby housing associations act as the lead developer on sites rather than acquiring homes from private developers via S106.

This would enable housing associations to build up longer and more consistent pipelines of development sites, which would help avoid some of the pronounced peaks and troughs in delivery that have been associated with previous Affordable Homes Programmes.

Resilient funding provisions for affordable housing should be a high priority for Government

Due to the strong dependence of housing development on economic cycles, as outlined above, the risk of taking a market approach to affordable housing is that affordable housing supply may become more volatile and pro-cyclical.

As we are experiencing in the current Covid-19 economic downturn, having a safe and affordable place to live is a key necessity for every human being. It is in periods of downturn, that households are more likely to lose their job, become evicted and struggle to afford housing. Having a resilient provision of affordable housing, for those most in need during downturns, should be high on the priority list of the Government.  

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Dr Stanimira Milcheva</span></strong>
Dr Stanimira Milcheva

Dr Stanimira Milcheva is an associate professor in Real Estate and Infrastructure Finance at University College London. Stani’s research is broadly in the field of real estate and infrastructure finance. She also works on topics related to affordable housing.

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[1] Office for National Statistics (2020), https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/articles/alternativemeasuresofhousingaffordability/financialyearending2018.

[2] CASE is a group of 10 major housing associations providing affordable homes in the South East of England. Collectively, members own more than 400,000 homes across the country, with over 140,000 in the South East. The members of CASE are: L&Q, Metropolitan Thames Valley, Moat, Optivo, Paradigm, Radian, Sovereign Housing Association, The Guinness Partnership, The Hyde Group and West Kent Housing Association.

[3] The National Housing Federation is the voice of housing associations in England. Its members provide 2.5 million homes for 6 million people.

[4] Cross-subsidy is model in which the profits from the sale of market housing are used for the construction of affordable housing, including tenures like social rent.

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Government must ensure no renter loses their home due to Covid-19

Today, the country is back in lockdown. Yet this time there is no Government action to help private renters stay in their homes. 2 million private renters are now claiming state support, but the money is not sufficient to cover average rents. Thousands more are ineligible. Eviction notices have been dropping through the letterboxes of renters who have struggled to keep up with payments, through no fault of their own.

For the first national lockdown, the Government did the right thing. They paused all court proceedings, meaning no evictions could take place. They have since extended notice periods, and requested that bailiffs do not enforce in areas of local lockdown, as well as over Christmas.

For this second lockdown, mortgage holidays and credit holidays have been extended, but courts continue to evict tenants.

Rather than facing lengthy and expensive court proceedings, thousands of renters will be packing up and searching for a new home, putting themselves and others at risk at a time when we are being asked by the government to stay at home. A month-long pause on bailiff action will be of little comfort.

As the number of Covid-19 cases, and deaths from the disease, are rising fast, it is essential that renters – especially those who are vulnerable or shielding – can remain safely in their homes. To do this, the Government must pause all eviction proceedings, and ban landlords from serving section 21 no-fault eviction notices or serving notices under section 8 for rent arrears relating to coronavirus.

The Government has done the right thing before. We call on Ministers to act swiftly, to ensure that no renter loses their home due to covid-19.

Yours Sincerely,

Alicia Kennedy, Generation Rent

Michelle Simpson, The Big Issue

Bridget Young, Nationwide Foundation

Anela Anwar, Z2K

Jacky Peacock, Advice 4 Renters

Portia Msimang, Renters Rights London

Roz Spencer, Safer Renting, Cambridge House

Alicia Kennedy
Alicia Kennedy

A leader in strategic planning and campaign organisation, Alicia has had a 25-year career operating at the highest level of national politics.

She worked with Prime Ministers, Cabinet members, hundreds of MPs, and thousands of Councillors and volunteers to deliver successful local and national election campaigns for the Labour Party. She was made a life peer in 2012 and is non-aligned.

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Deposit Barrier Must be Addressed to Widen Access to Home Ownership

With an average deposit of £21,000 required, the Government’s much heralded ‘First Homes’ will remain beyond the reach of a large number of aspiring homeowners. This includes the 61% of private renters who have no savings at all, those who are unable to rely on the bank of mum and dad and a high percentage of key workers whose incomes are not high enough to enable them to save.

To truly widen access to home ownership we must address the deposit barrier. Only then will we be able to open the housing ladder to those on lower incomes. The Government has proposed that a quarter of all new affordable homes will be First Homes: homes for first-time buyers sold at a discount of at least 30% of market value. Whilst the lower price will no doubt make these homes more affordable to some, there will remain a significant portion of aspiring homeowners for whom they will still be out of reach because they simply cannot raise the amount required for a deposit.

Based on the average price paid by a first-time buyer, even after the 30% discount a buyer under ‘First Homes’ would need to have saved £14,000 for a 10% deposit. With lenders dramatically reducing the number of mortgages available to buyers with small deposits it is now more realistic for a deposit of 15% or 20% to be required. This equates to £21,000 or £28,000 respectively, plus legal fees and moving costs. Factor in that just 10% of private renters aged 16-34 have savings of between £5,000 and £15,999 and this keeps the dream of home ownership beyond the reach of all but a small minority of young renters.

It’s not just the deposit which is a barrier but also the income needed for a mortgage. Lenders will generally offer four and a half times a buyer’s salary. Based on an average First Homes house costing £140,000, if the buyer did manage to save a 10% deposit they would need a mortgage of £126,000. This would require them to have a salary of £28,000. However, a newly qualified nurse starts on a salary of less than £25,000 and it would take 6-7 years’ experience until they had reached this salary threshold. What about the key workers in the care and retail sectors who have kept the country going through the pandemic on a minimum wage?

There is a home ownership model which provides a solution to these barriers. ‘Affordable rent to buy’ helps tenants to save up to buy the home they are renting. It is different from other rent to buy schemes as the tenants benefit from an affordable rent for a much longer period of up to 20 years compared to just 5, and when they are ready to buy they receive a gifted, 10% deposit which they do not have to repay.

The model does not require buyers to provide any upfront deposit to access the scheme. Instead, they undergo a financial assessment which looks at whether they will be likely to be able to buy in up to 20 years’ time. For example, for a newly qualified nurse the provider would see that within 10 years she or he would be able to afford the mortgage so they would be eligible for the scheme, even though they couldn’t afford a mortgage or deposit now. Based on their finances, they will choose to aim to buy at year 5, 10, 15 or 20. Rather than having to remain in private rented accommodation up until this time, the nurse would live in the home they know they will one day own and pay 80% market rent helping to save more each month towards a deposit with a long-term, secure tenancy.

A number of local authorities have already adopted the model. As well as helping more people onto the housing ladder, they are experiencing the model’s wider benefits including that it houses many families from the housing waiting list. 17% of the families benefitting from the scheme come from social rented homes that they no longer require freeing these up for those in greatest need. On top of this, the model is fully funded by pension funds and institutional investment so not using up any of the grant funding local authorities access from the Affordable Homes Programme to deliver homes for social rent.  

To truly help level up home ownership, the Government should ensure that models which more effectively address the barriers to home ownership are included alongside First Homes. This will encourage local authorities to consider adopting innovative models like this to address their local housing need and help make home-ownership a reality for many who otherwise can only dream of it.

<span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color"><strong>Steve Collins</strong></span>
Steve Collins

Chief Executive of Rentplus, the leading affordable rent to buy housing provider.
Steve has over 25 years’ experience in housing and development, both in private and public-sector organisations.

This includes working for the then Homes and Communities Agency where he had responsibility for the successful delivery of over 42 Government programmes with a combined value of c.£900m pa, aimed at accelerating the delivery of housing and public sector land across the country.

Steve has significant experience in the affordable housing sector where he managed the allocations of the affordable housing grant programme.

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