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10-year plan for housing Blog Post

Looking back over 7 years ahead of the 10-year plan for housing

Image by the justified sinner licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In the debate on the King’s Speech last summer, the Prime Minister said that “the fight for trust is the battle that defines our era”. Frightening but true. During my seven years as Chief Executive of Shelter, the catastrophic loss of trust in institutions and experts, the disenchantment and disenfranchisement of so many people, the polarisation of the public discourse, the pandemic of misinformation – all these are now the stuff of nightmares. Yet the basic building blocks of the social contract, of people’s sense of having a stake in the country, are enduring. I have always believed that a safe home is paramount among these, and in those seven years that belief has only strengthened.

Despite a world that is so much more frightening than it was then, we are actually closer to bringing that safe home within the reach of many more people. I am proud of having played any role in that. But also I’m truly afraid that the progress of the last seven years could still slip away. That’s a political choice, and one that still has to be set in stone.

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When I joined Shelter in 2017, although we had not yet experienced the loss of innocence that would accompany the pandemic, Trump’s first victory, the world domination of conspiracy and polarisation, my view of the job ahead was fundamentally shaped by that most horrific and unjust of catastrophes, the Grenfell Tower fire. It was a symbol of systemic neglect of the duty to provide a decent home for people on low incomes. It laid bare the lethal consequences of the demonisation of social housing tenants that had pervaded policy, practice and indeed entertainment for decades.

Just a few years earlier, Inside Housing had declared “The Death of Social Housing” on its front cover, and frankly it looked to me as though, instead of resisting that narrative, the entire sector (including Shelter) had accepted defeat.

It seemed urgent to speak truth to power, however unwelcome: to speak with not for the people with the most to lose or gain from housing policy, to translate the appalling stories that colleagues in our frontline services were hearing every day into clear goals and action.

So where are we now? There has been much to celebrate during my time at Shelter: the work of an incredible group of colleagues, with the support of many thousands of campaigners they have mobilised up and down the country.

Housing is back on the agenda and social housing is not a dirty word. It was a core issue of both national and local elections. Mayors were fighting it out to outbid one another on the number of social homes and Labour, the Greens and Liberal Democrats all recognised the importance of social housing in their manifestos. The current government has committed to the biggest increase in social and affordable homes in a generation and has changed local planning rules to include a focus on social rent. 

For us at Shelter it started with our Social Housing Commission in 2018, chaired by Reverend Mike Long of the Notting Hill Methodist Church near Grenfell, which brought together a panel of key figures across the political spectrum with grassroots campaigners like Grenfell Tower survivor Edward Daffarn. This was our line in the sand, a defining moment that signalled the need to work together to push for the systemic solution that is the only way to prevent and ultimately end homelessness. The Commission’s report was one of the main foundations of our ten-year strategy launched in 2019, which firmly and proudly put campaigning for social homes at the heart of Shelter’s work for a decade.

It took several years of campaigning with Grenfell United, and later with the family of Awaab Ishak, but in 2023 we finally saw the passing of the landmark Social Housing Regulation Act and the creation of Awaab’s law to ensure social tenants have protection against unhealthy and even life-threatening conditions.

We also took the decision in that strategy to fight for an end to no-fault evictions and give private renters greater security and stronger rights, a fight which is finally culminating in the once-in-a-generation Renters Rights’ Bill.  

We’ve seen other key victories along the way. The Conservative government restored local housing allowance to cover the cheapest third of rents after campaigning from Shelter – and passed legislation allowing councils to buy land without having to pay extortionate ‘hope value’. During the pandemic we pivoted in response to the emergency, and successfully pushed for a ban on all evictions.

And in 2021 and 2022 our strategic litigation saw the courts establish that refusing to rent to people on benefits is indirect discrimination and therefore unlawful under the Equality Act.

None of this would have happened, I believe, without the changes we made in Shelter to organise in our local communities and build a national movement for change. Our transformational support for individuals and families continues, but now those individuals, families and communities are at the heart of our campaigns as well as our services. We’re not a think tank, we are an activist organisation. We were not founded just to pick up the pieces, or to complain about how bad things are. We were founded to change things.

Which brings me to the future. Yes, the narrative on social housing has shifted beyond recognition since 2017. But that is not enough. Yes, the new government has demonstrated it is willing to reform planning, funding, legislation and policy in order to enable more social homes to be delivered. But the change we really need is yet to come.

Let me be clear: anything less than significant investment in social housing at the Spending Review will derail attempts to end homelessness and fail to fix our broken housing system. The government must deliver the lasting solutions that will transform this country and rebuild the rotting foundations of our society. The promise that hard work can bring a good life is broken in this country – a broken promise that is driving the upheaval we see all around us. 

The government needs to make that promise a reality again: a promise that begins with home.   

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10-year plan for housing Blog Post

Encouraging innovation in the 10-year plan for housing

The construction industry is a substantial and diverse sector. Beyond creating physical assets, the industry fundamentally shapes how we experience and interact with our environment. Construction encompasses not only the building of homes, but it also includes hospitals, schools, offices, shops, and critical infrastructure such as roads, rail, and utilities – all of which help to underpin the broader economy.

However, the adoption of innovation has been historically uneven across the sector. While construction in the energy sector is advancing new technologies, and a second high-speed rail line is anticipated from the transport sector, in contrast, the housing sector remains slow to implement new approaches. Instead, it persists with a model for housebuilding that consistently fails to keep pace with demand. The result is constrained supply, driving up house prices and rents. Meanwhile the supply of social and affordable homes has consistently fallen short for decades, despite the efforts of successive governments, creating an acute shortage that is deeply felt.

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Over the last decade we’ve witnessed the stuttering rebirth of modern methods of construction in the UK. This has been particularly challenging for those companies who adopted a modular approach which has been delivered successfully in other countries such as Japan, Germany, and Sweden.

In hindsight experts now recognise that modular house construction, known as category 1 according to the government’s MMC framework, was unlikely to deliver the volumes needed at scale due to a lack of accessibility across UK infrastructure. Category 1 homes are factory built, preconstructed rooms which are transported to site and assembled as homes or large structures. Market failures which include companies such as Ilke Homes, Legal & General Modular and Urban Splash Modular have cast a shadow over the industry and attempts to modernise how we deliver new homes. However, failure is a necessary and integral part of the innovation process, a reality we must recognise across all industries and learn from to develop the right outcomes.

This has led the market to adapt and move to utilising category 2 and 5 of the MMC framework which incorporates a panelised system, now recognised as fully deliverable across UK infrastructure. The case strengthens when you consider the additional benefits of reaching net-zero and ability to anticipate the Future Homes Standard, which is due to come into effect in 2025.

The housing industry’s challenge is no longer a lack of innovation, but rather the resistance to change that impedes its adoption. This is despite a widely held belief that without the adoption of new approaches, we will fail to meet government’s stretching housing targets.

Driven by existing market conditions, leading housebuilders and developers have long adhered to a tried and tested approach which has successfully aligned with their business model. In addition, fragmentation across the construction industry which incorporates multiple tiers of contractors, each with their own supply chain, prevents effective capturing and sharing of knowledge. This limits the dissemination of innovative solutions. Whilst these are inevitable consequences of the housing market, as the government implements new housing standards and regulations, the industry must eventually embrace new approaches that will help them keep pace, protect profits and deliver against future homes standards.

As the government grapples with balancing supply-side and demand-side measures, Homes England and the Greater London Authority continue to be the most significant sources of development support through capital grants. However, in many cases limited grant funding and rising construction costs have significantly undermined the viability of social and affordable housing development opportunities. This is particularly challenging for innovative new approaches that incorporate modern methods of construction due to perceived risk and lack of widespread industry adoption. This has resulted in a significant absence of viable opportunities, which will demand intervention to bring about change.

To encourage the adoption of innovative construction methods, we must re-evaluate the current approach to development appraisals. These are the financial evaluations used to assess the viability and profitability of a proposed residential development project, and are at present do not take into account the need for net-zero homes or of incoming quality standards.

This is particularly crucial in a sector that prioritises up-front costs, often deterring the adoption of new techniques and approaches despite their ability to meet net zero, dramatically improve performance of the asset and deliver lifecycle cost savings. Including a presumption in favour of net-zero homes that align with local planning and meet future homes standards, will speed up the delivery of high-quality homes, reduce risk and improve cost certainty.

This brings me to a salient point when considering a ten-year strategy for innovation. We need a system-wide approach that integrates innovative approaches into the development process. This should include new lifecycle appraisal modals, supportive finance and proactive development strategies that bring additive capacity to delivering new homes at pace.

With the support of our parent company AtkinsRéalis, we have fully embraced the principle of additive delivery that avoids disrupting existing housing supply. By leveraging a precision-engineered industrialised approach to development that utilises offsite manufacturing, we are able deliver net-zero, future-ready homes with a reduced impact onsite quicker and cleaner than traditional methods. 

I am pleased to see that the current government acknowledges the need for change, placing housebuilding at the centre of its growth strategy. To achieve its 1.5 million homes target, the Government must support the adoption of innovative solutions that can address the imbalance between supply and demand of new social and affordable homes. This is evidenced by more than 1.2 million households on the housing waiting lists and 123,100 households living in temporary accommodation. Business as usual will not address the problem. At EDAROTH, we believe in ‘housing as a verb’ and something we do to provide safe, secure, and truly affordable homes where people want to live, work, and prosper. We stand ready to deliver against that belief. However, we cannot do that alone. It will require collaboration, market intervention, accountability, and a willingness to embrace change to make it a reality.

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Attlee’s secret weapon to build homes: zoning

When people speak of planning, England typically emerges as a global anomaly in two senses. First, it has an unusually restrictive system. The result: among the most expensive housing in the world, but very little invested in the structures of our homes. Much of the value of our housing lies not in the structures themselves but in the planning permission for those structures to exist at all. Second, the English system lacks precise rules and relies on vague ‘policies’ whose application is unpredictable, costly and slow. Of course, many other planning systems have some element of discretion. In the US, it is called ‘discretionary review’, and it is common in unaffordable areas. Many pro-housing Democrats complain about this ‘discretionary review’ as a barrier to building more affordable homes. But  the US also has development regulations that explicitly map out permitted and prohibited development—a system known as ‘zoning’. England’s planning system is almost entirely discretionary, because the ‘policies’ that set out what is acceptable are so unclear and often in conflict.

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But beneath this familiar narrative lies a forgotten piece of history: England introduced, and occasionally still uses, a distinct form of zoning known as Special Development Orders (SDOs). Originating from the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947, these orders provided a clear path for extensive, swift and predictable development once the rules had been decided. In essence, England had pockets of zoning—albeit hidden in plain sight.

Special Development Orders were created as a key part of the modern planning framework established by Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government. The Act of 1947 is  famous for nationalizing development rights and introducing local authority-led planning permissions.

Right-wingers often claim that the system was anti-development from the outset. But this misunderstands the intent. This landmark reform also included provisions allowing the housing minister to accelerate development by granting broad planning permissions directly in specific areas, bypassing local discretion entirely. These government decisions—formalised as Special Development Orders—outlined explicitly what development was automatically allowed, effectively zoning areas for particular uses without further  delay.

The immediate post-war years showcased the practical value of these orders. For example, the development of Milton Keynes—one of England’s best-known New Towns—benefited significantly from an SDO issued in 1963. The Special Development Order permitted housing, commercial premises, schools, roads, and public amenities within clearly defined areas. By setting these permissions upfront, the government greatly simplified the subsequent development process. Rather than requiring each building or street to pass through individual planning approval, development in Milton Keynes could proceed swiftly, assured by clear zoning-like rules already established at a ministerial level.

This approach illustrates the potential of SDOs to facilitate quick and predictable development—but only after careful consideration of underlying principles and standards. Such a system does not remove the need for thoughtful deliberation; instead, it frontloads these decisions, enabling speedy delivery once consensus is reached. SDOs could prove invaluable today for initiatives like urban regeneration projects, where local stakeholders and government officials could first agree on development principles, allowing an SDO to subsequently unlock quick, predictable, and coordinated development.

England has continued to use other limited forms of zoning. Permitted Development Rights give automatic permissions for certain kinds of development. The rights are popularly used for limited home extensions such as loft conversions. Local Development Orders are sometimes used by councils to automatically permit specific kinds of building in certain areas.  And the Green Belts are also a form of zoning, albeit a most restrictive kind that essentially does not permit new homes at all.

Zoning alone, even in its most effective form, is insufficient to guarantee abundant housing. The critical challenge is not just adopting zoning rules but ensuring that those rules generously permit housebuilding where housing demand is greatest. Simply implementing zoning does not give us abundant or affordable housing if the zoning remains highly restrictive.

US suburban zoning exemplifies this clearly: in huge swathes of the US, the zoning permits no more than detached single family homes, each required to have its own enormous parcel of land. Such overly restrictive zoning, designed to exclude those on low incomes who cannot afford large detached houses, demonstrates vividly how precise rules may restrict rather than encourage more affordable homes. As a result, most homes in the US are built in rural areas with no local government where there are no zoning rules at all.

But England’s historical use of Special Development Orders hints that we have neglected a productive tool. Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, the Government occasionally deployed SDOs when rapid or large-scale development aligned with national interests. Whether for New Towns or industrial parks in the 1960s or later enterprise zones, SDOs temporarily established a more generous and predictable environment—briefly mirroring international zoning practices, yet generally avoiding the restrictiveness seen in many parts of the US.

Despite their past effectiveness, Special Development Orders have largely faded from modern planning debates.  SDOs could be a vital tool in this Labour Government’s mission to build 1.5 million new homes. Previous New Towns such as Milton Keynes successfully used SDOs to enable large-scale, well-planned communities.  And the Government intends to use an SDO for the new Universal Studios theme park. But we should go much further than that if we are to build 1.5 million new homes this Parliament.

For all its faults, England’s planning system does have the tools to enable new homes to be clearly planned and quickly delivered. By carefully determining up front where and how growth is most urgently needed, Special Development Orders could become powerful tools for Labour again, particularly in contexts like urban renewal or building new infrastructure. For the Government to deliver quickly, it should use the best tools in our current planning system. Building the new homes that our communities desperately need cannot be delayed further. Attlee and other Labour Prime Ministers knew that delivering results for working people quickly mattered. It is time we renew this spirit of urgency. SDOs could help to transform our economy and build the new homes we need. 

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10-year plan for housing Blog Post

Lessons from the devolved nations for the 10-year plan for housing

Prime Minister Keir Starmer host Council of Nations and Regions by No.10 Downing Street is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The UK’s housing challenges are vast and multifaceted, ranging from affordability crises to inadequate supply. The devolved nations offer valuable insights into addressing them through innovative approaches and long-term strategies.

1. Leveraging devolution for a tailored approach

Since devolution, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have shaped housing policies to meet their specific needs. A good example of this is the Right to Buy (RTB), which Scotland abolished in 2016 to protect social housing supply. Similarly, Wales phased out discounts before fully abolishing the scheme in 2019, prioritising affordable housing supply.

The UK government has begun welcome reforms to limit social housing loss, but RTB remains centrally controlled. Since 2012, local authorities (LAs) have managed their Housing Revenue Accounts (HRAs) independently, yet RTB rules remain dictated by central government. Given councils’ financial independence—reflected in their ONS classification as “public corporations” and the £8 billion debt incurred to gain autonomy—local authorities should arguably have the power to set their own RTB policies. In contrast, Scottish LAs have had financial independence for many years and there is no centrally determined rent policy, so they still have more financial freedom than in England.

Empowering councils to manage RTB aligns with the government’s “devolution revolution” and would allow them to tailor policies to local housing needs, ensuring the scheme supports sustainable social housing supply.

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2. Scaling up affordable housing supply

Scotland’s Affordable Housing Supply Programme aims to deliver over 110,000 homes by 2032, with at least two thirds allocated to social rent. Wales aims to deliver 20,000 affordable homes by 2026, prioritising social housing. Whilst neither is doing well against current targets, for various reasons, they both met those which were previously set.  To date, Northern Ireland has committed to delivering at least 2,000 new social homes annually to address its pressing housing need, against an average annual build of 1,400 over the past ten years. Furthermore, the Northern Ireland Executive recently endorsed a cross-departmental housing supply strategy aiming to deliver 100,000 homes by 2039, a third of which will be social homes. These nations demonstrate that ambitious targets, backed by substantial funding, can yield significant results.

In England, affordable housing delivery has consistently fallen behind. According to CIH’s 2025 UK Housing Review, England allocates just 53% of housing investment to affordable housing compared to Scotland’s 99%, Wales’ 78%, and Northern Ireland’s 100%. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s latest poverty report highlights that a lack of affordable housing is a key driver of poverty, with increasing numbers of families facing financial hardship due to rising rents and insufficient housing supply.

To bridge this gap, the UK government should increase grant funding for social housing to levels comparable with Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Grant is already much higher in Scotland, covering around 60% of new build costs for housing associations (40% for LAs). In comparison, the average funding per affordable home in England sits at £56,800, while the cost of building an average three-bedroom home typically reaches to over £202,000. Moving beyond reliance on developer contributions would provide a more stable and predictable funding stream, ensuring that affordable housing targets are met regardless of market fluctuations.

3. Addressing decarbonisation and building safety

Scotland’s Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing (EESSH) sets ambitious emissions reduction targets with clear milestones (though there is some way to go to realise them). The Welsh government has made retrofitting of social housing a priority in the new iteration of the Welsh Housing Quality Standard, though levels of government investment fall short of that suggested by the Future Generations Commissioner’s “Homes Fit for the Future” report. The UK government should move ahead with establishing mandatory energy efficiency standards for social housing, enshrining in legislation the target of reaching EPC Band C (or equivalent) by 2030 that most providers are already working towards. It should also invest further in retrofitting to reduce emissions and alleviate fuel poverty.

Building safety is another critical area where lessons can be drawn. Scotland’s comprehensive regulations and funding frameworks have ensured high standards. Meanwhile, in England, financial pressures hinder housing providers’ efforts to remediate safety issues. While the Social Housing Regulation Act marked progress, a unified, well-funded approach to safety and decarbonisation is essential to protect residents and improve living conditions.

4. Innovative approaches to homelessness prevention

Wales has led the way in tackling homelessness through progressive legislation. The Housing (Wales) Act 2014 introduced a duty on local authorities to prevent homelessness, focusing on early intervention. Despite initial progress, Wales, like other jurisdictions, faces the same pressures around finding suitable accommodation and responding to the additional demand created by the Covid-19 pandemic and cost of living crisis. However, there has been some success with the roll out nationally of the Housing First model since 2018 which has delivered significant results.

Scotland has gone further with its commitment to end homelessness, underpinned by a shift to a Housing First approach, strengthened legal duties and the abolition of priority need. The Scottish Government’s Ending Homelessness Together plan prioritises rapid rehousing and long-term support, ensuring that people experiencing homelessness have access to stable, permanent housing as quickly as possible. Although it was undermined by cuts in 24/25 to the affordable housing supply budget, the budget has been restored for 25/26. Northern Ireland has strengthened its homelessness prevention framework, incorporating long-term housing-led strategies.

The Public Accounts Committee’s recent report on homelessness in England underscores the need for urgent and focussed action, highlighting rising levels of temporary accommodation and the growing number of children affected (though all administrations are struggling with TA and B&B use.) The report highlights systemic issues, including a lack of affordable housing, inconsistent funding, and insufficient local authority capacity, which have left councils struggling to manage the crisis. Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s analysis also links homelessness with deepening poverty, reinforcing the need for stronger preventative measures.

England’s homelessness strategy should adopt similar preventative measures by:

  • Expanding discretionary housing payments to provide immediate financial relief to households at risk of homelessness.
  • Enhancing local authority capacity with resources and training to deliver effective homelessness prevention services.
  • Ensuring consistent, long-term funding for prevention initiatives to reduce reliance on temporary accommodation and tackle root causes of homelessness.
  • Implementing a Housing First approach nationwide.

These steps, combined with a national commitment to increasing affordable housing supply, would shift the focus from crisis management to early intervention. This approach not only reduces long-term costs but also delivers better outcomes for vulnerable households, ensuring fewer families face homelessness.

5. Lessons in governance and funding

Stable funding and coherent governance are critical to successful housing outcomes. Scotland’s commitment to high grant levels per home has enabled consistent delivery of affordable housing. In contrast, fragmented funding streams and short-term policymaking hinder progress in England.

The government should provide multi-year funding settlements for housing programmes and empower local authorities with greater fiscal autonomy, such as through land value capture mechanisms.

Conclusion

The devolved nations have shown that bold, well-funded policies can deliver tangible housing outcomes. By embracing the learning, England can create a sustainable, inclusive housing strategy that addresses the pressing challenges of the next decade.

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10-year plan for housing Blog Post

Delivering the council homes we need in the 10-year plan for housing

Lamb Close, Warwick is licensed under CC BY 2.0

How can councils building homes contribute to the Government’s ambition to provide 1.5 million additional homes by the end of the Parliament and fulfil its commitments to getting more affordable homes both through the planning system and the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP)?

The research undertaken by Ben Clifford and I (2017, 2019, 2021 and 2023) shows that Councils are providing homes through a wide range of means and for a range of tenancy/sale models which are not generally recognised in the media. The level of council home delivery in England is regarded as low when viewed through the government’s figures on social housing completions but this hides both the commitment and contribution that councils are currently making and there can be increased delivery if these current initiatives are recognised and supported more proactively. 

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More sustainable funding

Council homes built using the AHP applies to approximately 50% of current local authorities in England with Housing Revenue Accounts (HRA) that did not transfer their stock. To enable this group of councils to increase their delivery through this programme, our research shows that the current barriers to delivery including cost of materials and construction, funding costs, land prices and the levels of subsidy to support delivery are well known and each can be acted upon by government with some initiatives including those already started.

But our research has highlighted other ways in which councils could provide more homes. The first is to give local authorities five -year funding to deliver a social housing programme, as is given to the Mayor of London and Housing Associations, rather than requiring them to seek individual project funding through Homes England. This would enable councils to employ a housing development and delivery teams, improve their skills and enable these teams to work on the wider provision of housing as is the case in the London Boroughs.

The second way to increase council housebuilding is to abolish the HRA. This is not an accounting principle used anywhere else in the world and is peculiar to the UK Treasury. Although some will argue strongly that the HRA provides a ring-fenced fund for housing within councils, its arcane rules operate retained, centralised control. How do other countries provide social rent homes without using an HRA approach? They have the freedom for prudential borrowing against their whole asset base and then use cross subsidy models to provide social rent homes – in some countries by multiple providers. If the Treasury made good its 2007 promise to introduce the International Financial Reporting Standard to local government, then local authorities would be in the same position as housing associations, the private sector and rest of the OECD member states to provide homes.

Thirdly, the subsidies available for social rent homes must be more realistic within the current costs context and also be more flexible in their provision. The government can do more on this by reducing costs of borrowing for homebuilding by councils and enabling those councils still paying off government housing loans taken when historically high interest rates were prevalent, such as the 1990s, to pay these down early if they replace this debt with that used for new home provision.

Embracing alternative models

It is generally assumed that councils without an HRA do not provide housing, but our research found that this was not the case. In 2023, 94% of all councils were supporting housing delivery such as providing land, buildings, funding, partnerships with housing associations and/or developers, rent guarantees, advocacy and other planning requirements that, in some cases, have resulted in higher delivery of affordable homes than those with HRAs.

However, these contributions, also made by councils with HRAs, are hidden because housing associations and developers are shown as delivering this affordable housing with no acknowledgement of council contributions. We need a better way of demonstrating how councils are supporting delivery through other institutions which recognises their role.

Strengthening council housing provision in planning

There are other ways in which council housebuilding can be increased. In the planning reforms recently announced, the government has stated that local authorities will need to demonstrate the need for social rent homes in its plan making evidence. However, once identified, no other parts of the planning system have been changed to enable these needs to be translated into delivery. This starts with the lack of requirements to identify and safeguard enough land for social and affordable housing needs in local plans, continuing the planning assumption that all homes are provided by the private sector, with affordable homes provided as a market residual. Reforms in land acquisition costs recently consulted upon by government could make some difference but at the same time, the land could be more easily made available if identified at this earlier stage.

Another initiative used in Scotland could be extended to England. When homes are negotiated through Section 106 agreements in planning applications, the council has an almost guaranteed right to subsidy for these homes to enter the council’s stock and they are not left empty or negotiated away because no housing association will take on their management.

Institutional reform to prioritise social housebuilding

The role of housing associations collaborating with councils in social housing delivery also needs to be reset. In their tradition and heyday, the main purpose of housing associations was the provision of social and affordable housing. Since they have been able to become developers, the social rent mission has increasingly been overlooked. The Housing Regulator is having to remind them of their responsibilities to keep their existing homes in good repair, as should be required as a consequence of their access to private finance. Further, some housing associations are selling off social rent homes in higher priced areas without replacing them and it is in these areas that the housing need for such homes can be its most acute.

Finally the reforms underway in Homes England and their relationship with the mayors of the new Strategic Authorities should be promising for local authority housebuilding but old cultures die hard. Their focus on regeneration and land acquisition has slowly increased with only a third of the Homes England budget in the last five tears being spent on affordable housing. It is time to increase the percentage of this budget to the AHP and develop land its holds through sales to councils and housebuilders with covenants that require social homes to be built as a condition of the land sale.

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Focusing on enforcement and how Labour can embrace disruption from government

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Reforming the Right to Manage – what it will mean for me

Shop with flats above, Bewcastle Grove, Mowmacre Hill, is licensed under Wikimedia Commons

I’m one of the lucky ones. The daughter of a cabinet maker and dance teacher from east London, my parents got on the property ladder in the 80s and I always believed owning a home was achievable.

But after working as an actress, scuba diving instructor and who knows how many zero-hour contract jobs in precarious industries, as I entered my 30s, it was seeming less and less likely.

Then the pandemic hit. I moved back in with my mum at 33 – it wasn’t in my plan! I worked remotely throughout the next two years, saving everything I could to get a deposit together.

I was so proud to move into my own flat in Romford in March 2022.

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But it quickly went wrong. I soon found out we were living in a botched conversion, with a range of problems, not least with our roof. What’s worse, neither our freeholder nor our managing agent seemed at all concerned with our issues.

In January 2023, after months of unsuccessfully negotiating with them to claim the repairs for the roof from the new build warranty or the builders who botched it, we applied to the first-tier tribunal (FTT) to challenge the reasonableness of our service charges.

We didn’t use a solicitor, but provided examples of more reasonable quotes for the works completed, and proof that we were being charged for works not completed. We also successfully challenged the cost of the buildings insurance, which was reduced by half.

While tribunal challenges are stressful and not everyone has the capacity to take them on, we launched another one in January 2024, again, largely successfully. We then decided to apply for a ‘court-appointed manager’, the only way we could end the cycle of FTT challenges every year.

However, our situation changed when Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook suddenly announced he was accelerating long-awaited Right to Manage (RTM) reforms in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 (LAFRA), legislation passed but not enacted by the previous Government. These reforms will make it easier for us to hire and fire managing agents if they fail to meet our needs.

My flat is one of six, above a shop. Under previous laws, blocks with more than 25% of commercial space do not qualify for RTM, which ours didn’t with 33%, leaving us completely under the rule of the managing agent and freeholder. However, with the limit now lifted to 50%, we will qualify for RTM from 3rd March.

The road ahead won’t be easy. Forming an RTM company requires the support of 50% of all leaseholders. This threshold can be especially problematic in larger buildings, and Labour should reduce it in future legislation.

The freeholder can also play games with a counter notice, although there should be specific reasons for them to issue this. Our freeholder chooses to challenge nearly every RTM and drag everyone through the FTT for further months and sometimes up to the Court of Appeal, taking years and costing everyone a lot of money.

Previously, leaseholders had to pay the freeholder’s costs as well as their own as part of the RTM process, but thanks to the reforms coming into place today, we will also no longer have to pay these.

If no counter notice is served, we could self-manage or appoint our own agent to look after the building by mid-July.

RTM is not the answer though. My freeholder will still be the ultimate owner and hold certain rights, with continued (and often obstructive) involvement in the sales process.

Our goal is to enfranchise, which is where leaseholders buy out the freehold of their block. This arrangement is similar to commonhold, giving rightful control to flat owners over their homes and money. Labour has committed to “finally bring the feudal leasehold system to an end” and introduce commonhold as a default tenure.

Unfortunately, a group of freeholders has been given permission to challenge parts of LAFRA at the High Court, claiming human rights infringements. But, despite their predictable opposition, the government has a mandate to hold firm, having been elected on a manifesto to free leaseholders from this oppressive system of perceived home ownership not widely practiced elsewhere in the world.

The government has pledged a white paper on commonhold imminently and a draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill to come forward towards the end of the year. With extensive policy work already done by the Law Commission half a decade ago and many consultations since, I and other leaseholders are tired of being cash cows and cannot wait another four to five years for an end to this scandal.

Being a leaseholder has damaged my mental health and finances. It has been the worst experience of my life. I can’t sell my own “home”, I can’t rent it out, I’m totally trapped it, and I don’t even really own it. I can’t move on with my life.

The tribunal and ombudsman are overwhelmed with disputes, not especially powerful and are symptoms of the leasehold cause. Abolishing leasehold will mean flat owners are not tied to predatory managing agents and freeholders. 

There are 5.3 million leaseholders in England and Wales, many trapped in the same ways, and worse, than I am. Phasing out leasehold for commonhold will show Labour at its best, disrupting vested interests to change the system in favour of working people. If we don’t prioritise this, leaseholders – many of whom are our core voters – will continue to be defrauded in their own homes and grow even more disillusioned with politics.

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Blog Post

Ensuring resident safety: driving up property management standards

Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Angela Rayner confirmed the Government’s response and adoptions of the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report this week (Wednesday 26th February). Phase 2 of the report was a watershed moment, exposing systemic failures in tall residential building safety and outlining clear recommendations to prevent another tragedy. I was proud to be in the Chamber and place on record my support for the Government’s response and raise some questions on behalf of the construction industry.

This weekend, Labour politicians from across local and national government are gathering at the East Midlands and West Midlands Labour Conferences. While London has the highest concentration of tall buildings, it is important to highlight the challenge outside of the capital. Recent data shows that cities including Leicester, Nottingham, Wolverhampton, and Coventry all have between 11-50 buildings over 11 metres requiring remediation. Birmingham has the highest number outside of the London boroughs, with 201-400 buildings still awaiting safety work. This leaves many people living in high-rise blocks across the Midlands in danger in their homes.

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Since my election last year, I have worked with The Property Institute (TPI), which campaigns for the regulation of property managers to improve building safety. Many property managers have stepped up since Grenfell to protect residents by becoming key drivers of critical repairs and multi-million-pound remediation efforts, despite this not being within the original remit of their role. Many are professionally qualified and competent. However, the absence of regulation allows dangerously under-qualified operators to take on this vital role, putting residents at further risk – from both the homes in which they live and the people they trust to manage them.

Across the country, thousands remain stuck in unsafe homes, anxiously awaiting remediation. Government data shows that 70% of buildings over 11 metres identified with dangerous cladding have yet to be fully remediated. The Grenfell Inquiry exposed the failures of the Tenant Management Organisation (TMO), which neglected fire risk assessments and basic maintenance, directly contributing to the tragic loss of life. While the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 addressed competency issues in the social housing sector, no equivalent legislation exists for the private sector, leaving a dangerous gap in oversight for those living in the private sector.

Astonishingly, anyone in the UK can become a residential property manager or start a managing agent company without formal qualifications or experience. These individuals oversee fire safety, building maintenance, insurance, and leaseholder finances—critical responsibilities that directly impact lives. Yet, without regulation, there is no system to ensure they are competent or held accountable when things go wrong.

Building management is an increasingly complex field requiring expertise in safety regulations, legal compliance, tenant rights, financial accountability, and environmental rules. Without mandatory qualifications and continuous professional development, we cannot expect property managers to navigate this evolving landscape effectively.

As Labour politicians meet this weekend, and with The Property Institute hosting an event on building safety at Labour’s East Midlands conference in Leicester, now is the time to push for change. Having worked in the construction industry before becoming an MP, I know that when gaps in regulation exist, lives are put at risk.

The sensible solution is the introduction of mandatory professional qualifications for property managers, backed by a strict code of practice and enforced by an independent regulator with legal authority. I’ll be lobbying for this to be included in the remit of the new ‘single Construction Regulator’ proposed in the Deputy PM’s speech this week. These critical changes would ensure that those managing residential buildings are both competent and accountable.

We owe this to the thousands of residents across the Midlands and beyond who continue to live in unsafe homes.

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10-year plan for housing Blog Post

Adapting to the digital age in the Government’s 10-year plan for housing

Any ten year plan for housing has to at least try to grapple with some of the Rumsfeldian “known unknowns” – in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, the more we know the more we know we don’t know. 

Nowhere is this as prevalent as the impact that better and faster technologies continue to have on the transition from an analogue world, where knowledge is held in tangible form, to an increasingly digital one where knowledge is held in the form of “ones or zeros” in a server farm in the middle of nowhere.

This is hard stuff for humans, and the organisations they have created for the analogue world, to adapt to.  The rate of technological progress already far outstrips the rate of evolution of the human race – and that’s before quantum computing (QC) becomes widely available.  To give an idea of the power of quantum, Google reported in 2023 that their Sycamore quantum computer managed in seconds to crunch numbers that using the Frontier supercomputer (then the most powerful computer in the world) would take over 47 years – that’s roughly 10 million times quicker.   

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Is QC with all that potential to boost speeds and productivity going to develop to be in the mainstream in the next 10 years?  Nobody knows – it is for now firmly in VUCA territory.  But its not contentious to say that technologies are bringing advances at an exponential rate – as the surge in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in the last 3 years has shown.  The pace at which the potential of these technologies will grow seems unlikely to slow.

To suggest that the housing world has been slow to adopt and adapt to the increased pace of digitalization over the last decade is also not contentious.   Customers judge their landlord not against its performance with some other landlord, but against the speed, price and effectiveness of other organisations they deal with in their lives.  And relative to the very best out there, social landlords continue to fall behind.  As an example, car manufacturers will now call drivers to alert them to a drop in tyre pressure – but few landlords have any equivalent way of knowing that pressure in a boiler has dropped and the heating has stopped working, let alone devised ways of working to take advantage of this insight.

Put simply, technology and digitalization has the potential to change the game for the biggest gripe there is between landlords and residents: moving the mindset for repairing homes from one based around “you tell us its broken, we will fix it” to “we can predict this will break, so we are coming to fix it before it does”. 

Of course, in the general economy, the invisible hand of the market assures that there are rewards for those who “move with the times” and penalties for those who do not.  In fields such as social housing, that hand has to be driven through regulation.  And for the next 10 years, Government and its associated Regulator, has to up its game in relation to technology and data expectations.  Perhaps there are four areas to prioritise:

  1. Getting the basics right.  For three consecutive years, the Regulator for Social Housing (RSH) has been warning that social landlords’ data and digital practices are not up to scratch.  Residents, the Housing Ombudsman Service, MPs and local councillors all know it from the range of complaints they make or have to deal with; and the Information Commissioners Office knows it from the reported data breaches.   But regulatory action has not followed; Government should ensure that on such an important aspect of modern service delivery, the Regulator can no longer be ignored with impunity.
  2. Moving to real-time. Once data is comprehensive and accurate a transition to real-time becomes possible.  Many possible improvements flow from this such as: evidencing compliance can become continuous, rather than episodic; service charges can be calculated precisely for the services provided for the extract duration of the tenancy; and real time data sits at the heart of the automation (and enhanced efficiency) of service delivery.
  3. Transparency. When data was kept on paper, inside files, and office floors groaned with the weight of many filing cabinets, making information visible to others was hard.  Digital data faces no such barriers.  The time has come for Government to mandate that all data about a resident’s tenancy, their home and the services they receive is available without asking, so the “I know what they know” test is passed
  4. Professionalism and skills. With a pause in the launch of the Competence and Conduct standard, the Government has a chance to rectify the glaring omission from the consultation document – in which neither the word “data”, “digital”, nor “technology” appear.  You cannot be a professional today without this skill set, let alone in 10 years’ time.   

In short, the government should set a direction and regulatory expectations for housing organisations to have “Digital in their DNA” – where technological and digital competence is so deeply embedded in the landlords’ culture and capabilities, its leadership style, and its associated systems and processes that it has stopped even being a thing organisations have to think about.  And to do that, first, the digital competence of the RSH itself has to be prioritised and invested in so it no longer uses an old map to navigate a very different new world.

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Blog Post Event

Solving the housing crisis for young people – LHG Under-40s conference write-up

On Saturday 8 February, Labour Housing Group held its first ‘Young LHG’ conference, with ‘Solving the housing crisis for young people’ as its theme.

Session 1: ‘How is Labour delivering on the housing crisis?’

Josh Dean, Member of Parliament for Hertford and Stortford, focused his opening remarks on the importance of getting young people involved in politics, whether on local council planning committees or as MPs. Nesil Caliskan, MP for Barking, emphasised the resonance that housing has as an issue in her constituency, where rents have doubled in ten years due to the failures of the last Conservative governments. She cited her experience as a council leader to stress the importance of robust, resilient local leadership, and argued that councils, as custodians of their local areas, should take on the role of master developers.

Questions from the panel chair, Red Brick editor Alex Toal, and the audience focused on how local support can be built for development. Panellists were asked what a ‘successful’ record would look like in practice.

Josh argued that the framing of development that resonates most strongly with members of the community is the importance of ensuring that our children and grandchildren are not disadvantaged. He also emphasised that politicians should be honest with the public about the lack of brownfield sites, which cannot offer a silver bullet solution to the housing crisis. He argued that meeting our housing targets is not sufficient in itself – members of the community must also ‘feel’ this success. He argued that one example of this felt and concrete ‘success’ might be seen in an easing of communities’ ongoing retention crisis, as many young people are currently being forced to leave their local areas in search of more affordable houses elsewhere.

Nesil agreed that success must be felt by the local community. This would mean ensuring that new developments are liveable, convenient, and well-connected through the delivery of effective social infrastructure. She also emphasised the importance of fixing poor-quality homes that are already on the market, rather than focusing exclusively on new housing. There was also agreement on the panel that local authorities are not currently delivering enough new housing but stressed that council budgets had been decimated by years of under-funding from successive Conservative governments.

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Session 2: ‘More homes, better homes, cheaper homes: Can Labour do all three?’

The panel chair, Councillor Nasrine Djemai, Camden Council Cabinet Member for New Homes and Community Investment, opened the session by emphasising the need for bold action to solve the housing crisis. She framed the delivery of more, better and cheaper homes as a moral imperative, stressed that housing is fundamentally a matter of security, dignity and equity. She highlighted recent work done by Camden Council to approve new affordable housing and to retrofit existing homes, but stressed that national planning reforms, as well as new regulations on land banking, are needed to unlock local initiative.

Jay Morton, Director of Bell Phillips Architects, opened her remarks by welcoming the ambitiousness of the Labour Government, which has brought stability to the sector. She called for a planning system that not only facilitates development but also ensures quality, in order to create healthy communities incorporating amenities, social spaces, crucial services, and local businesses. Creating communities that people are proud to live in, she argued, can help to inoculate local areas against NIMBYism. In the short-term, she stressed the importance of more efficiently utilising infill sites that have not yet been exploited, while as a longer-term solution, she pointed to the importance of investing in innovation that might enable us to rethink how we build.

Kane Emerson, Head of Housing Research at the YIMBY Alliance, emphasised the importance of housing to the Government’s growth ambitions. In the first instance, increasing housing supply stimulates economic activity and brings down rents. However, he emphasised that where we build is as crucial as the numerical target of 1.5 million new homes during this Parliament. He called for joined-up thinking to ensure that housing is built in places where workers want to live, employers want to hire, and affordability remains a problem, such as Oxford. He also pointed to the ancillary economic benefits of housebuilding, such as higher environmental standards and lower energy bills. Finally, he stressed that the Government should look to unlock small, local developers, as opposed to just the Big Four housebuilders.

In the Q&A section, panellists were asked how it could be ensured that increased housing density does not come at the expense of quality. Another question focused on the problem of second homeownership, and the effects it has on local communities. Other questions focused on whether a Labour case could be made for policy measures such as stamp duty abolition or rent controls.

There was hesitance on the panel about the likely effectiveness of rent control, which could suppress development and lead to under-investment in maintaining existing stock. Kane framed council housing as a de facto form of rent control and cautioned against ‘tick box regulations’ that, however well-intentioned, might slow down development without solving the problems they set out to fix. Jay concurred that second homeownership can create unbalanced communities and emphasised that houses should be thought of as social infrastructure rather than just as private investments.

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Session 3: ‘Tackling the Affordability Crisis: Lowering Prices, Mortgages and Rents’

Uzma Rasool, Councillor for Grove Green in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, began the session by stressing the importance of young people’s involvement in local planning politics. She pointed out that just 15% of councillors are under 45. She stressed that councils can make real change, pointing to new, wheelchair-accessible units recently approved by the borough. However, she also called for national action to widen access to mortgages among those whose lack of inherited wealth currently locks them out of homeownership.

Chloe Timperley, Green Mortgage Campaign Lead at the Green Finance Institute and author of Generation Rent, began by offering a dose of realism. Pointing out that property wealth remains most families’ main asset in the UK, she acknowledged that fairer new measures to tax wealth may not currently be politically possible. She argued that a more practical approach would focus on professionalising and regulating the private rented sector. She also argued for ending the Right to Buy, framing it as an ideology-driven policy that has generated a social home waiting list of 3 million people, and argued that council housing complements the private rented sector by offering a pathway for tenants with lower and less stable incomes.

Tom Darling, Director of the Renters’ Reform Coalition, welcomed the Government’s Renters’ Reform Bill, which he argued would make a real difference to the UK’s 11 million private renters. However, he also warned that the Government may not be on course to meet its target of 1.5 million new homes – and pointed out that even if the goal were achieved, rents would only fall by an estimated 2% by 2029. He therefore argued for approaching housing as a distributional question, rather than one merely of supply. He suggested that rent increases within tenancies should be capped and called for more Government investment in new social homes, of which 90,000 are needed each year. Finally, he warned that the housing market is eroding the social contract with young people, who are losing hope of ever owning a home and therefore turning to the solutions offered by alternatives such as the Green Party and Reform.

Questions from the chair and audience focused on the practical measures that could be implemented to improve housing affordability. There was a focus, in particular, on tackling the ability of shell companies to buy up properties as a private investment. It was pointed out that unaffordable rents are generating an unsustainable housing benefit bill – in effect, a subsidy to private landlords. Finally, panellists were asked if they could point to successful cases in cities and countries around the world that have found success in improving affordability.

Chloe argued that mortgage credit, in concert with house building, could be an effective lever for increasing people’s access to housing, while Tom returned to his call for more stringent regulation of the private rented sector. Chloe also argued for more transparency on ownership to tackle the problem of shell companies buying up properties as a private investment. On the question of successful case studies, Tom praised the record of Vienna in delivering beautiful, affordable social housing – but also pointed out that the dire state of the UK housing sector means that we can take lessons from most other countries, not just utopian examples. Chloe argued that Japan had found success by framing land as a shared resource and a community asset, as embedded in statutes such as the Basic Act for the Land.