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Delivering a Fairer Housing in Westminster

Langdale House, part of the legendary Churchill Gardens Estate in Westminster, image by Images George Rex licensed under (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

For many of us in local government, a pro-social housing and house building national government isn’t just a welcome relief, but a necessity to give our tenants, leaseholders and residents the compassion, dignity and security they deserve.

Labour’s manifesto promises to support councils to build their capacity and make a greater contribution to affordable housing supply. This is of course welcome, but must be accompanied by an appreciation of the challenges local authorities already face in delivering fairer housing for their residents. While some components of our story are unique only to Westminster, we think this reflection of our journey gives some insight into some of the challenges faced by all local authorities.

Locally here we won control of the Council in 2022 after nearly 60 years of Conservative control. The previous administration’s treatment of social housing was literally scandalous – in one historic instance using housing as a tool for gerrymandering, the so-called ‘Homes for Votes’ scandal – with a litany of management failures including the collapse of City West Homes. As well as the headline-grabbing issues, there had been a long-standing degradation of the housing service after decades of neglect.

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In contrast, our winning 2022 manifesto promised to build a Fairer Westminster. That meant for us putting housing at the heart of our agenda for change. We promised to take a resident-centric approach to improve housing management, deliver genuine engagement with tenants and leaseholders, and make building new council and lower rent homes the Council’s top policy priority. This was reinforced by the work of the Future of Westminster Commission and turbocharged by a Cabinet Member who has grown up in Westminster’s social housing stock and fully understands the resident experience (and challenges).

Even with our renewed focus, the Westminster housing context has remained extremely challenging. The average house price in Westminster was £954,000 in June 2024, the second highest in London. This has meant that 43% of people in the borough lived in households with an income of less than 60% the UK median after housing costs have been subtracted (i.e. in poverty) – which is the highest proportion of any London borough.

There are of course limited land opportunities for building and development as an inner-city borough. Moreover, supply pressures are compounded by the high numbers of short-term lets and second homes. The Census empty home rate in Westminster was recorded as being 25.4%, which effectively means that one in four properties in Westminster were marked as being empty at the time of the Census, suggesting 30,000 properties in Westminster have no full-time residents.

Westminster also has the highest proportion of private rented properties in the country – making up 44% of the housing stock. The high cost of private rents, supply shortages and ability for landlords to evict tenants easily has resulted in skyrocketing presentations of homelessness. 5,000 households approached the Council for support last year due to homelessness. This has resulted in extreme pressures on Temporary Accommodation. 

Despite this we have made significant progress in delivering on our housing ambitions. Recognising the scale of the challenge we set up our Housing Improvement Programme. New people have been brought in with different skill sets, experience and perspective from across the council to drive change. We’ve taken a structured approach, focusing on key problem areas first, and maintaining a constant dialogue with residents to help shape solutions and priorities. Some of examples of our early successes include:

  • Resident Panels: We have created a borough-wide Resident Panel which is open to all Westminster tenants and leaseholders to support resident input in our policy making. We have set up Task and Finish Groups to focus on specific issues. Our first Task and Finish Group focused on repairs. The Group undertook research and proposed recommendations which have been central to improving our Repairs Service.
  • Housing Repairs: The Panel’s recommendations, and our desire to improve repairs and make it localised and more responsive, is reflected in our new Repairs Policy which provides a clear understanding of the service residents should receive and how the council will continuously improve. To put this policy into action, one step we have taken is to pilot a Direct Labour Organisation (DLO). This is a small team of in-house operatives tasked with carrying out communal repairs across our estates and jointly signing off work completion with residents.
  • Estate Offices: Estate Offices were closed by the previous administration and had created a disconnect between residents and the council. By re-opening offices in communities, we are able to provide more personalised and localised advice and support service for residents. Feedback from residents has been positive and have welcomed the shift in placing housing officers back into the communities they serve. 
  • Understanding resident vulnerability: We identified that some residents’ housing casework is inherently more complex due to their vulnerabilities. A proactive new process for identifying and recording vulnerability for residents was implemented at the first point of contact and to date the team has identified vulnerability for thousands of residents so as to agree on reasonable adjustments. Moreover, we have set up a multi-disciplinary team, the Customer Advocacy Team (CAT), who can be called upon to offer advice for complex cases and visit the most vulnerable to ensure the residents’ needs are assessed.

We in Westminster are of course beyond excited to play our role in delivering on the ambitions set by the new Labour Government and have already made strides in improving our existing services, but this must be matched by an appreciation of the challenges and pressures many local authorities already face.

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Planning reforms for small and community-led builders

Building work by Brett Jordan licensed by Unsplash

Tom Chance will be speaking at a Labour Housing Group webinar: What should be in the Labour Government’s NPPF, on Tuesday 17th September.

The government’s consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) asks 106 questions. Buried in the middle are a few questions about how the planning system could support more small builders and community-led development.

Dr Tom Archer argued here in May that we need a more diverse and competitive housebuilding industry, including more community-led housing, if the government is to hit its housing targets. I represent many of the 900 community groups that have been trying to build more than 23,000 homes in a broken system. So how could the NPPF help?

Not by watering down standards and reducing the requirements for social housing. Community-led developers want to raise standards, and most Community Land Trusts (CLTs) focus on social rent.

Nor is our problem with ‘NIMBY’ planning committees overturning officers’ recommendations. If anything, we have more of a track record of the reverse, with members overturning finickity officer objections to approve community-led homes.

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The Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) review on housebuilding concluded that the main barriers to entry for SME builders are the length and uncertainty of the planning process, and the complexity, cost and information requirements.

Take information requirements. The Housing Forum found that across 21 local authorities there were 119 different types of document that might be required to apply for planning approval. The list has grown hugely over the past 20 years. In one recent case, a CLT applying for permission to build 6 homes needed 82 documents.

Drawing this up now costs CLTs around £11,000 per home, substantially larger than the £3,500 per home estimated by the CMA for larger sites.

As for the length and uncertainty, we analysed 84 applications submitted by CLTs between 2006 and 2022. The average time to get a decision was 359 days, compared to the statutory target of 56. Some, held up by issues like nutrient neutrality, have been stuck for years.

Having spent all that money, and waited a year or more, will you get permission? Even if you think that you have met all the policy requirements, you cannot be sure.

Local planning authorities do not tend to allocate many small sites, a process which would confirm the principle that they can be developed. It is more costly and resource-intensive to allocate 20 sites of 20 homes than one site of 400 homes.

The NPPF says large sites could be subdivided to create opportunities for SMEs and CLTs. But this is very rare. The Letwin Review concluded as much in 2017, but his proposed reforms have not been acted on.

So communities generally seek permission on what are known as ‘windfalls’ – sites not allocated by planners, where the principle of whether it should be developed is in question. The uncertainty is risky.

The point about this complexity, cost, length and uncertainty is its impact on finance. You will need to find at least £100,000 to prepare and submit a planning application. You have no idea if it will succeed, or be wasted money. You do not know how long it will take to get a decision. Nobody will lend you money on those terms. So new entrants need deep pockets, or depend on grant programmes like the Community Housing Fund.

We could reduce the uncertainty in a few simple ways.

One would be to expand the community-led exception site, a policy we secured in the NPPF last year. It enshrines the principle that democratic community-led developers can develop windfall sites adjacent to settlements to meet local needs, removing any uncertainty around the principle of development. But it has an arbitrary size cap that we want lifted, and it should also apply within settlements to help community-led approaches to suburban and urban infill. Many CLTs have successfully negotiated the local politics to develop disused garages, underused open space and even back gardens, as well as brownfield and greenfield sites on the edges of villages and towns.

We would also like community-led developers to be able to propose ‘community priority projects’ when local plans are drawn up. These would allocate sites, or parcels of large sites, to meet specified local needs, ringfenced for community-led development. The process could ease the pressure on officers by having communities do a lot of the legwork to establish ownership and viability, and win round their neighbours to the principle of development.

These modest reforms will help. But we really need the forthcoming planning and devolution bills to fundamentally change the balance of complexity, cost, delay and uncertainty that is hobbling the diversification of our housebuilding industry.

You can find out more about the asks of the Community Land Trusts Network in their recent submission to the NPPF consultation.

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The first consumer inspection reports: what they tell us

social-housing-inspection-reports
Apartments block in London by Pedro Ramos is licensed by Unsplash

On 24 July the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) published its first regulatory judgements (RJs) on the performance of two registered providers of social housing (RPs) following inspections under the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023. Watford Community Housing Trust (WCHT with 5,200 homes) and Nottingham Community Housing Association (NCHA with 10,500 homes) both secured a C1 grading, meaning they were judged as meeting the outcomes of the Regulator’s consumer standards.

The C1 judgement states:

“that overall the landlord is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards. The landlord has demonstrated that it identifies when issues occur and puts plans in place to remedy and minimise recurrence”.

Consumer ratings today are very different from the verdicts of the Audit Commission in the 2000s. We are not talking about the delivery of ‘excellent’/’three star’ services identified by the Commission under its inspection regime. While organisations will have the accolade that they are meeting the standards, they will not have the kudos of being able to call themselves ‘excellent’.

The reports offer scant detail about the quality of services and do not provide the evidence the Regulator holds that the standards are being met. As we were advised during the development of the new framework, inspection reports are intended to mirror those produced following in-depth assessments (IDAs) in the housing association sector covering the economic standards. Consequently, the reports are extremely short and are simply a summary of the inspection findings. The NCHA report runs to just 522 words and the WCHT report is even shorter at 365 words.

Looking at inspection methods from other sectors gives us alternative reporting models which RSH could learn from. Both Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) produce much longer reports following inspections.  More importantly both regulators use templates that summarise the inspection findings and promote consistency in reporting. The RSH may face pressure to revisit its narrative approach as tenants (and other stakeholders) struggle to draw comparisons between the performance of different landlords.

Will the inspection reports for large providers be longer than those generated for smaller landlords? The first such reports have examined the performance of relatively small providers. Blanket positive conclusions about the performance of large providers with significant geographical spread may be challenged by groups of tenants who may feel that they do not reflect the level of service they receive from their landlord in their area.

The NCHA and WCHT reports set out how the providers have assured inspectors that the consumer standards have been met. However, there are no links to key public documents such as tenant satisfaction measures (TSMs). To improve transparency and accountability, the RSH should consider publishing up-to-date TSMs as part of its inspection reports.

Focusing specifically on TSMs, and taking WCHT’s satisfaction scores as an example, some commentators might be surprised to see the Watford-based provider secure a C1 rating while all its 12 satisfaction scores (bar one) were less than the median score achieved by 196 housing associations in the LOCARLA dataset. This effectively confirms that there will be no clear read across between TSM scores and the ratings that providers will secure following an inspection.

WCHT and NCHA were both due a scheduled inspection, having each had IDAs in 2020. In both reports, all four of the consumer standards were subject to assessment by inspectors. Will this approach be repeated for future inspections? The RSH affirms its risk-based approach to regulation. It might be expected that inspections would be more focused where a document review and the TSMs (for instance) have shown that the inspectors should concentrate on, say, the poorly performing services.

The judgements for NCHA and WCHT, based on consumer inspections, can be compared with the RJs delivered earlier in the month for four providers deemed as failing the standards. The four RPs were each given a non-compliant C3 consumer rating, which means there are “serious failings in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed”.

We are now seeing the outputs of the new regime for consumer regulation over seven years since the Grenfell Tower disaster precipitated the wholesale change in state oversight of social housing. A key question arises as the various reports emerge from the RSH about the performance of individual providers against the consumer standards. Will the reports give tenants and other stakeholders the insight they need into the performance of providers? Will the reports make providers more accountable for the services they deliver to their tenants? It is noteworthy that the RSH reports score on the cusp of ‘very difficult to read’ for readability[i]. That suggests they are intended more for professionals than the general public. 

The RSH is starting to roll out the new regulatory framework for social housing providers just as a new government takes over. Ultimately what will ministers make of the nascent regulatory framework? Will they deem it ‘fit for purpose’? We already know that in the health and care sectors the role of the Regulator has been criticised by the new Secretary of State.

But given the in-tray that the new housing ministers face, an immediate review of the regulation of social housing providers is unlikely.

An earlier version of this blog was published by Housing Quality Network

[i] Flesch reading ease scores of around 30-33, listed as ‘difficult to read’ with scores below 30 ‘very difficult to read’

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Seven years after Grenfell: Labour must end the cladding scandal

Everyone deserves a safe home in which to live, work, care for their families and be able to make plans for their future. Yet, more than seven years after the Grenfell Tower fire, an estimated 600,000 people will go to bed tonight in homes that are still unsafe, and almost 3 million are trapped with unsellable homes, unable to move on with their lives, according to recent analysis by the Sunday Times. More than 15,000 residents have been ordered to leave their unsafe homes since Grenfell, and evacuations are on the rise.

Justice has been a long time coming for the bereaved, residents and survivors of Grenfell. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry will publish its Phase II report on 4th September, which is an important step in holding individuals and organisations to account for the loss of 72 innocent lives, but criminal trials are not expected to begin until at least 2027, ten years after the fire. Shockingly, the pace of removing cladding and other fire safety defects from flats across the country has been even slower – and at the current rate, it could take decades.

The previous Government rarely acknowledged the full scale of buildings affected, but estimates published in July show that 11,000 buildings are expected to require remediation works, including 2,414 managed by social housing providers. Despite this, the latest official statistics report that only 4,630 buildings are being actively monitored or “in programme.” Cladding has been removed from 1,350 buildings: just 12% of the estimated total. The government has committed £9.2bn of funding, but only £2.3bn (25%) has been spent so far.

Being “in negotiations” about remediation or having “plans in place” counts for little when dangerous cladding – or other construction defects that enable fire to spread rapidly – remain on people’s homes. Let’s not forget, these defects are defined as “life-critical.” Recent cladding fires, from Wembley to Valencia, have demonstrated why action remains so urgent.

When Grenfell survivors gave evidence to parliament a year after the fire, they warned MPs that :

“Grenfell 2 is in the post unless you act, and quickly… The Government need to take responsibility… There needs to be a plan, and it needs to be acted on right now.”

In Opposition, Labour agreed. Back in 2021, Sir Keir Starmer shared his plan to end the cladding scandal. He was adamant that Boris Johnson, then Prime Minister, “could end this scandal right now if he wanted to. The Government must end the delay and give innocent homeowners the safety and security that they deserve.” Now, with a new Labour Government in power, there is no time to lose in getting a grip of this crisis.

Since day one, the pledge to build 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament and to “get Britain building again” has been front and centre in Labour’s messaging. However, residents and leaseholders are still waiting anxiously to hear the same kind of commitment and clear deadline for making existing homes safe.

The Minister for Building Safety and Homelessness, Rushanara Ali, has written to property developers about her intention to convene a roundtable, to agree a plan for accelerating remediation. This is welcome, but what is needed is firm action to hold all parties to account, with clear deadlines and real consequences for delays. Otherwise, building profitable new homes will continue to take precedence over making existing homes safe, leaseholders and residents will remain trapped, and the market for flats will remain broken.

Labour must focus not just on the pace but also on the quality of remediation, ensuring that the scope of works is not being minimised by developer-commissioned assessments which leave combustible materials and other defects in place, because this leaves leaseholders and residents with higher risks, higher costs, and potentially unsellable homes forever.

The current developer remediation contract covers only 15% of the 11,000 buildings expected to require remedial work. Therefore, the same urgent focus must be applied to government-led remediation programmes, and a wider pool of developers, contractors and freeholders should be compelled to make all their buildings safe. That does not just mean external cladding; internal building safety defects must also be addressed, because buildings cannot be made half-safe.

The End Our Cladding Scandal campaign has published a manifesto, outlining five key focus areas for the new Government to finally end the crisis:

  • Establish clear and comprehensive risk assessment standards. Definitive, holistic, and risk-based guidance is essential for buildings of all heights and for both external and internal defects, so that safety assessments and the remediation required will be absolutely clear and consistent.
  • Make homes safe at the pace residents need and deserve. The pace of work must significantly accelerate from today. The government, construction industry and building owners must all be held to account to ensure a swift solution.
  • All leaseholders must be fully protected from the cost of remedying safety defects. The building safety crisis is the result of a decades-long collective failure by the construction industry and successive Governments that ignored warnings that the building regime was not fit for purpose. Every leaseholder is blameless and should have equal protection.
  • Protection from further financial penalties. The government must ensure leaseholders affected by this national scandal are not further penalised by an onerous mortgage lending process and exorbitant building insurance premiums.
  • Urgent action to give people their lives back – now. Those affected must be able to obtain accurate information about their homes, remediation work must be carried out with respect for residents, and mental health support must be available to those affected.

We cannot wait for Grenfell 2 before we act. The new government has an opportunity to step up and deliver a much fairer and faster end to the building safety crisis – and it is time to grasp the nettle.

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Commemorating the centenary of Labour’s first Housing Act

Today’s housing crisis is all too stark. The number of households living in inadequate and temporary accommodation has risen exponentially, whilst rough sleeping numbers continue to increase. Private rents are increasing at the fastest rate since records began and the number of evictions has escalated. Housing pressures are not just affecting those that rent. Rising mortgage costs have plunged hundreds of thousands of households in mortgage arrears. Fourteen years of Conservative inaction and neglect on housing, particularly the gross under-provision of affordable and social housing, has left Britain facing a housing crisis comparable to those which followed the end of both world wars. The raft of housing measures recently set out by the new Labour government in the King’s Speech is heartening, but Labour must now clearly commit to funding the construction of a major programme of social housing. Such a programme will not only provide the much-needed homes for thousands of families and individuals, but it will also contribute significantly to Labour’s plans to grow the economy.

It is fitting that following Labour’s electoral success on 4 July 2024, we should take the opportunity to look back at the housing legacy of the first Labour administration that took office one hundred years ago in 1924. That groundbreaking government, led by Ramsey MacDonald, Labour’s first Prime-Minister, lasted a mere nine months due to its precarious minority status. As a result, its achievements were limited but its greatest success was surely its housing policy. Labour’s Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1924, that came into effect exactly a century ago on 7 August 2024, gave a renewed impetus to the building of council houses, following the collapse of Lloyd-George’s ‘homes fit for heroes’ housing programme and a subsequent Conservative attempt to close the door on the building of houses by local authorities. Its provisions lasted well into the 1930s and led to the construction of more than 500,000 council houses.

In response to the growing housing crisis immediately following the end of World War One, Lloyd-George’s coalition government planned to provide half a million council homes, comprising generous space standards (as recommended by the Tudor Walters committee that had reported on housing standards) and subsidised for the first time by way of an exchequer contribution. The Housing and Town Planning, etc., Act 1919, more commonly known as the Addison Act (after Christopher Addison the Minister responsible for the then newly established Ministry of Health), handed local authorities the responsibility for identifying housing need and formulating plans to meet such requirements. The 1919 Act provided a generous subsidy to local councils that plugged the gap between all losses in excess of a penny rate incurred by the local authority, provided the housing schemes had been approved by the Ministry of Health. In other words, the local municipalities were guaranteed against any serious losses on their housing programmes, the state taking financial responsibility for the provision of working-class houses. In 1920, private enterprise was given access to a ‘lump sum’ subsidy provided by way of an Additional Powers Act.  However, by 1921, following an economic downturn, Addison’s policy had become too expensive. It ran out of steam and failed to produce houses in the numbers promised. By 1923, the programme came to an end, eventually producing fewer than 214,000 completions (including 43,500 by private enterprise), less than half the number planned. However, the 1919 Act did establish an important principle. The local authorities had become the instruments for the housing policy of the state. Indeed, Addison had opened the door for the treatment of the provision of housing for the working class as a sort of social service.

The 1919 Act was followed by housing legislation less bold both in terms of the exchequer subsidy payable and in addressing the housing needs of the working class. It was one that conformed to the principles of so-called sound conservative finance. Neville Chamberlain’s Housing Act 1923, the vehicle by which Baldwin’s Tory government proclaimed its ‘property owning democracy’ mantra, favoured the construction of houses by private enterprise for sale or rent, benefiting mainly the lower-middle class. At £6 per unit per year over twenty years it offered a less generous subsidy than Addison’s Act. There was no requirement for a contribution from the rates. Space standards were lowered to cut down on cost. Nevertheless, Chamberlain’s statute eventually facilitated the construction of 438,000 houses. However, local authorities were treated as mere ‘also rans.’  The Act allowed councils to build houses themselves only if ‘they succeeded in convincing the Minister of Health that it would be better if they did so, than if they left it to private enterprise’. Although 75,000 council houses were built under the provisions of Chamberlain, the Act was, in effect, a deliberate attempt to prevent the permanent establishment of the local authorities as suppliers of working-class housing. If the supporters of Chamberlain had had their way, such provision would not be a social service as Addison had envisaged.

However, Labour’s 1924 housing legislation, championed by the Clydeside MP, John Wheatley, Labour’s first Minister of Health, was both radical and ambitious. Born in 1869 in County Waterford, Ireland, Wheatley grew up in Lanarkshire, his father Thomas, a labourer, having found work in the Scottish coalfields. Wheatley himself became a miner at the age of 12. He lived with his parents, eight siblings and lodgers in a one-roomed terraced house, which lacked many basic amenities, and had shared toilet facilities and water supply. Wheatley later described the degrading conditions of such housing in a pamphlet he published entitled, Mines, Miners and Misery, where he blamed the mine owners for dehumanising the workforce. Wheatley’s political activities had initially centred around local government where he specialised in and campaigned for housing at affordable rents. He was first elected to the House of Commons in 1922, leading the ‘Red Clydeside Group’ of MPs to Westminster following their triumphant showing at the election of that year. Received by George V on his appointment to the cabinet in February 1924, the king noted in his diary that Wheatley was an ‘extreme socialist’.  

Wheatley’s Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1924 provided for a fifteen-year housing strategy and an increase in the number of houses built each year from between 63,000 and 95,000 in 1926 to between 85,000 and 127,000 in 1928/1929, reaching a maximum of between 150,000 and 225,000 in 1934/1935. Wheatley’s Act afforded an exchequer subsidy to local councils for housing for rent at a rate of £9 and £12.50 per unit per year respectively in urban and rural locations, over forty years, shifting the emphasis back to council housing provision. The exchequer grant was conditional on the municipalities contributing a subsidy from the rates of 50 per cent of that received from the centre. Crucially, Wheatley built the foundations of his housing policy carefully, first working to gain an agreement between builders and the building trades on the expansion of the apprentice system to ensure there was the workforce to increase housing production. He also sought agreement with building materials suppliers to help limit price inflation, and wisely consulted the local authorities about his plans. As a result, the 1924 Act enabled the first ever peacetime collaboration between government, the building industry and trade unions to try to overcome the haphazard and casual nature of construction and to train workers to replenish wartime losses. Wheatley aimed at high quality standards, coining the phrase ‘homes not hutches’. However, the houses built under Wheatley’s statute were similar in size to those built under Chamberlain, but due to the deteriorating economic circumstances of the time, Chamberlain’s minimum space standards regularly became Wheatley’s maximum. Nevertheless, the houses constructed were considered to be of a good standard, requiring, for example, that homes built with a subsidy should have a fixed bath in a bathroom.

The Wheatley Act restored the powers of the local authorities to provide working class houses without first having to prove that they could not be provided by private enterprise. As such, Wheatley re-established the local authorities as part of the permanent machinery for providing working-class housing; a position that was reaffirmed in a codifying Act of 1925, following the Tories return to office in late 1924. The Wheatley subsidy was eventually repealed by the Conservative led National government in 1933. Nevertheless, by that time its provisions had resulted in the construction of more than 520,000 homes. Wheatley himself was well aware of the limitations of his housing legislation and did receive criticism from some of his parliamentary colleagues that it was too moderate. He was, however, a pragmatist stating ‘ … I have to take the materials which are available and use them, however much I may disagree with them, in order to contribute, however slightly, to the betterment of my fellow men’.

John Wheatley died on 12 May 1930, aged 60. The Wheatley Housing Group (Scotland’s largest registered social landlord) is named after him. It is fitting that we should commemorate and remember the centenary of the passing of the Wheatley Act. It represents a groundbreaking piece of housing legislation that blazed a trail for the provision of millions of good quality council homes for working people in the years that followed. In many respects Wheatley was the inspiration for Aneurin Bevan’s herculean efforts that produced over a million council houses between 1945 and 1951. It has been said that ‘the solid brick terraces which march across the inner suburbs of every British city could not have been built without John Wheatley […] the greatest of Clydesiders’. I for one will not argue with that.

Dr John Temple, CIHCM, is a retired housing professional. He served as a Labour councillor on Tyneside from 1981 to 2004. He is a member of the Labour Housing Group.

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Fast wins for more homes: how Labour can champion infill development

Burnett House, Lewisham, an example of upward extensions. Image by Kate Matison licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

The housing crisis remains one of the most pressing issues facing Britain today. With homebuilding at crisis levels, numbers of households in temporary accommodation rising, and young people struggling to get on the property ladder, Labour recognises the urgent need for action.

Labour has a powerful electoral mandate for bold and ambitious home building. There is also a need for fast wins that deliver rapid, sustainable growth in housing supply through smart urban infill development.

Building more homes is critical for economic growth. Every 100,000 additional homes adds around 0.8% to GDP during construction. However, ambitious long-term projects like new towns will take years to bear fruit. That’s why to get results we must pull other quick levers. Three ‘fast win’ policies could boost housing supply in the short to medium term, without requiring additional central government resources.

The Government can create approximately 30,000 new homes per year through carefully planned infill development, enabling residents to expand their homes, and making the most of housing association land. This approach aligns with Labour’s commitment to prioritise brownfield development and create high-quality urban environments.

We can build new homes in the right places through:

  1. Building up: Learning from successful Labour-led initiatives in boroughs like Haringey, the government should set national policy for sympathetic towards upward extensions of existing homes. This will add more living space and create new homes while preserving neighbourhood character.
  2. Street votes: The government can complete the implementation of ‘street votes‘, an initiative based on the Mayor of London’s Outer London initiative with strong centre-left support,  empowering communities to bring forward sensitive development through local decision-making. This builds on the principle of community engagement that Labour has long championed.
  3. Estate renewal: By amending national policy through the NPPF or Written Ministerial Statement, the government can make it easier for social landlords to deliver better homes for tenants. Cross-subsidy from new market homes could fund improved council housing for existing tenants and create additional social housing stock.

These policies focus on building more homes in high-productivity areas — breaking down barriers to growth and opportunity. By enabling people to live closer to good jobs, we can reduce commute times, improve quality of life, and cut carbon emissions.

Importantly, these low-key quick win approaches prioritise small and medium-sized builders, create jobs and support local economies. This is infill development done sensitively; enhancing rather than disrupting existing communities.

Labour’s vision for attractive communities is popular with voters. By making use of the potential of brownfield sites and urban areas, we can deliver the homes we need.

A small wins approach has seen success internationally. In the US, reforms to allow ‘granny flats‘ have dramatically increased housing supply in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. Labour’s government in New Zealand has nearly doubled new housing permits in Auckland through smart infill policies.

By enabling more homes in existing urban areas, we can make better use of infrastructure, support struggling high streets, and improve public transport viability.

Crucially, an approach to infill development prioritises community support and environmental sustainability. A Labour Government can learn from successful Labour local government initiatives like Sadiq Khan’s tenant ballots for estate renewal in London, which have shown strong resident support for carefully planned renewal and delivered thousands of council homes.

Labour’s plan for housing represents a pragmatic, forward-thinking approach to one of Britain’s most pressing challenges. By focusing on rapid, community-supported development in areas of high demand, we can boost economic growth, improve quality of life, and create the homes that Britain desperately needs. This is how we build a fairer, more prosperous country for all.

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A King’s Speech with hope for housing

2023 State Opening of Parliament by Houses of the Oireachtas is licensed under CC BY 2.0

‘My government’s overriding priority is to ensure sustained growth to deliver a fair and prosperous economy for families and businesses…’

2009

The last time a Labour Government set out its legislative agenda was in November 2009, when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister and the world was reeling from the global financial crash. This was a world before Brexit, when our aspirations included ‘peace in the Middle East’, ‘to improve management of water supplies’, ‘a reformed second chamber’ and to ‘abolish Child Poverty’. The 2010s were indeed a lost decade.

What did not get a mention was housing. The recognition of housing as a key determinant of the nation’s physical and economic health, had still not been effectively made. Arguably, this enabled the subsequent annihilation of social housing grant by Grant Shapps more politically acceptable than it should have been.

Fast forward fifteen years and we are living through a housing emergency the like of which we have not seen since the 1940s. Not one part of the housing system works effectively, be it renters’ rights, the lives blighted by years in temporary accommodation (not to mention the effect this has on local authority finances), the lack of social housing, the scandal of leasehold. Add to that building safety, the need to decarbonise our housing stock and the near impossibility for anyone getting on the housing ladder without substantial help from ‘the bank of Mum and Dad’ and it is a grim picture.

The last 15 years have seen the resurgence of housing campaigns not seen since the 1960s. Organisations like Shelter and Crisis have become the nation’s conscience and they have been joined by newer players such as Generation Rent, Priced Out and the National Leasehold Campaign. It would take a brave politician to say that housing is not one of the most salient issues.

So this morning we heard how our new Labour Government is going to spend its time, and the early political capital that comes with a massive majority. And, unlike 2009, housing was at the forefront of its agenda.

Central to this King’s Speech is a proposal to kickstart homebuilding by reforming the planning system, most notably shifting local input to an ‘how, not if’ basis in areas failing to build enough housing. Doing this marks a considerable shift in the housing debate on the ground, enabling discussions to go ahead on the basis that homes will go ahead, and making it easier for communities to discuss their priorities for new developments, whether these be social housing delivery, greener homes, or infrastructure enrichment.

Reforms to compulsory purchase compensation rules will make it cheaper to build housing, and particularly the social housing which we so desperately need. And simplifying the consenting process for major infrastructure projects will make it easier to ensure that the homes we deliver are well-provisioned with high-quality green infrastructure.

Importantly, its labelling as a Planning and Infrastructure Bill is an encouraging sign that government will increasingly tie together planning for housing and infrastructure, something called for by both sectors for some time.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives’ failure to pass the Renters’ Reform Bill is being remedied with its revival as the Renters’ Rights Bill. Not only will this introduce the long-awaited ban on Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions, but it will allow renters to challenge ‘unfair’ rent increases, apply the Decent Homes Standard and Awaab’s Law to the private rental sector, and create a digital private rented sector database. These measures will provide certainty to millions of private renters across the country who live in fear of eviction with no warning or reason.

Finally, the King’s Speech set out plans to reform the exploitative leasehold system. While the last Government passed some moderate changes to make it easier for leaseholders to buy their freehold, the Draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill will introduce the wide-ranging measures of the Law Commission, along with banning the sale of new leasehold flats so that commonhold becomes the default tenure. For the millions living in leasehold properties this will be a welcome relief.

Detail will follow in coming days on what exactly this legislation will look like, but it shows a strong commitment to both providing the homes we need, and ensuring that those living in them have security and dignity in their tenure. 

This King’s Speech is an encouraging start for what a Labour Government can do with a majority in the House of Commons. But key for many of the important measures to fix the crises in social housing delivery, decarbonising homes, and improving quality, require public spending. After clearing this hurdle, the upcoming spending review and Autumn Statement will both be opportunities to show how much money this Government is able to commit to solving these crises. 

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The housing election that wasn’t

2024 General Election in Kingston upon Hull East Holderness Road Methodist Church Doors by Hulian 11 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

With a few exceptions, the period of 22 May to 4 July 2024 was possibly the most predictable election in recent history. After six weeks of campaigning, debates and gaffes, nothing really changed. There was no breakout moment, no shifting of the debate, and no risk that the result would be anything other than a Labour landslide.

For housing campaigners, the lack of debate around the housing crisis will stand out as a missed opportunity. Before the election, housing advocates excitedly pointed to the increased salience of housing in polling, and its prominence in Labour’s 5 missions. But it hardly featured in the air war, the debates, or major policy announcements.

We can now look with hope to a Labour government poised to boost housing supply, improve quality of existing stock and reform problematic tenures like leasehold and private rent. But we should also ask: why was housing so absent from the election campaign; does this matter; and how can campaigners ensure that it is at the heart of the political discussion?

Multi-party consensus

Many pundits (including this one) pointed to housing as a dividing line at this election. The Conservatives had poignant housing failures around the Renters’ Reform Bill’s collapse and housing targets. Meanwhile, housing was at the centre of Labour’s policy offer, with the pledge to build 1.5 million homes, reform the private rental sector, and improve quality.

But the parties’ manifestos showed a relative consensus on housing policy. All agreed that housing supply needed to be sped up, with a focus on brownfield regeneration. All agreed on introducing some planning reform, with popular-sounding buzzwords to soften its potential risk. All agreed that reform of the private sector was needed. And all agreed that there was room for more social housing in the mix.

Meanwhile, more radical provisions such as rent regulation, ending the Right to Buy, or rebalancing the existing home ownership model, were off the table, meaning that there was little room for scare tactics.

What few dividing lines existed were either technical or risky. The Conservatives laid out their “cast-iron commitment to protect the Green Belt”, and while this was raised on the occasional front page it was never a fight which Labour sought. And few are qualified to, for instance, authoritatively debate the differences between Labour and the Conservatives’ leasehold policies.

The tightrope to a majority

One thing that has become clear since the election is how close things were in so many seats. While Labour’s majority is historic, it is built on precarious electoral foundations.

In housing terms, this was a tactical sacrifice of tens of thousands of votes in urban, renter-heavy seats, in exchange for those of suburban or rural, predominantly homeowner votes.

More so than in 2019 Labour’s electoral coalition contains a mix of those who are at the sharpest end of the housing crisis, and those who might worry that they would lose out from the change that is needed to solve it.

The parliamentary majority won at this election will make enacting this change easier, but making this a dividing line would have risked that majority. Labour’s ‘Ming vase’ strategy has successfully delivered dozens of MPs in previously safe Conservative seats like Hitchin and Gloucester, and talking more about planning reform or private rental reform might have lost a fair number of MPs who can now champion a wide range of progressive causes, including in housing.

This was particularly difficult in the tax-and-spend debate. So much of the election debate concerned the risk of future taxation from a Labour government, and so, while investing in skills, quality improvements, and unlocking developments may well ‘pay for themselves’ in the long run, any discussion of the amounts of spending involved would have led to further concerns of how to pay for this.

Linking the issues

Issues like the cost-of-living crisis and the state of the economy have been at the top of the political agenda at this election, but advocates failed to effectively link this to the high cost and low quality of housing.

In part, this is a symptom of the multiple crises going on in housing at the same time. The private renter locked out of home ownership and the historic resident of a dilapidated social housing block are suffering from different, albeit linked, policy failures.  

During a an election campaign, it was easier to speak of how delivering GB Energy could result in cheaper and greener power, than to explain to voters how reforming a tenure they weren’t living in, or building homes they couldn’t afford, would benefit their lives.

The real campaign is just starting

Does it matter that this was not a ‘housing election’? High salience debates often lead to polarising and extreme answers, particularly in two-party systems like the UK. And in housing, where so much is decided by the markets and private business, such populist answers can be particularly dangerous.

Whatever the state of the debate, Labour comes into office with a mandate to enact transformational change. Already planning reform is being mentioned as a priority for the first 100 days, and much more may follow soon.  

Now is the time of lowest risk and greatest opportunity. Debates about the scale of the solutions needed to end the various housing crises can be had without the risk of being turned into an attack line. And new MPs are more aware than ever of how tight their majorities are and the need to deliver for their constituents.

The task of advocates is now to drive the discussion with the hundreds of new MPs, many of whom care deeply about the housing crisis. Campaigners need to get better at demonstrating that the root causes of the housing crises, particularly the overall housing shortage, affect everyone regardless of tenure or security.   

By showing how certain reforms will help new MPs’ constituents, particularly those in marginal seats, campaigners can build a coalition for change in between elections.

This election may not have been a turning point in the debate. But, for housing advocates, the real campaign has just begun.

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What could the next government do on housing in its first 100 days?

The next government will inherit many social and economic challenges, with housing a significant part of the solution. At CIH we’re calling for a long-term housing plan, backed by targets to meet housing needs. We set out our proposals in our Homes at the Heart strategy and 10-point plan, published last autumn.  

While many of the reforms needed will require consultation and time to implement, there are some important actions the next government can take within the first 100 days of its tenure.  These would come with little to no cost, are quickly implementable, have an immediate impact, and set the tone for more ambitious reforms.  

We propose five immediate priorities, some of which are touched on in Labour’s manifesto:  

  1. Releasing public consultations on the Decent Homes Standard (DHS) and Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) in social housing, laying the groundwork for sector investment and improvements in quality, decency, and energy efficiency.
    The review of the DHS and examination of options for MEES have been ongoing for several years. Social housing providers have invested significantly in improving the quality and energy efficiency of their homes, but with no guarantee that improvements will meet higher regulatory standards.  Releasing these consultations would provide the sector with certainty on the government’s intention to introduce firm, stable regulation of social housing quality, unlocking more investment, and lay the groundwork for appropriate funding arrangements to support the sector to meet the new requirements. It would also provide social housing tenants with confidence that driving up standards is a firm priority.
  2. Reviewing the current DLUHC capital spending programme to identify unproductive spending areas and redirect investment towards social rent housing.
    Analysis published in CIH’s latest UK Housing Review (UKHR) reaffirms the need for a total supply of 300,000 new homes per annum, including 60,000-70,000 social rented units per annum in the initial period. From 2030, this should rise to around 350,000 new homes per annum, of which 90,000 should be for social rent.   In the UKHR’s assessment of all forms of government support for new housing investment between 2021/22 to 2024/25, comprising £41 billion in total, slightly more than half (51%) was directed towards the private market and 49% for affordable housing. This totals around £5 billion of investment pa for the private market. Whilst comparisons cannot be made strictly on a like-for-like basis, capital support for affordable housing supply is much higher in Scotland (90%), Wales (82%) and Northern Ireland (100%). The next government should provide a much-needed boost to affordable housing supply by rebalancing DLUHC’s capital spending and allocating a more significant proportion of the programme to social rented homes. This would have little to no effect on overall government spend.  
  3. Publishing the technical consultation on the implementation of M4(2) accessibility standards for new homes, providing certainty to housing developers that they will be required to meet new standards from April 2025.  
    In September 2020, DLUHC consulted on raising accessibility standards in new homes. In July 2022, it confirmed its intention to mandate the current M4(2) (Category 2: Accessible and adaptable dwellings) requirement in Building Regulations as a minimum standard for all new homes, subject to further consultation on draft technical details.  This has significant cross-sector support in the housing, health, and built environment sectors. In March 2024, the Building Safety Regulator said the draft technical details would be published for consultation before the summer recess. Reviewing and publishing the draft details for consultation would give certainty to developers that M4(2) will be the standard they are required to build to from April 2025, and signal to disabled people that improving the accessibility of new homes is a priority.
  4. Reducing discounts under the Right to Buy scheme (RTB) and allowing councils to set the discount rate in their area, stemming the loss of social housing and providing the government with space to examine longer-term options.
    Research by Savills estimates 100,000 homes are likely to be sold through RTB by 2030, with just 43,000 replaced as high discounts leave councils without funding to replace homes on a like-for-like basis. RTB can play an important role in enabling families to get on the housing ladder, but only if sufficient progress is made towards housebuilding targets to ensure it does not result in a net loss of social homes.  The long-term future of RTB requires more detailed policy thinking and public consultation, but the next government could take immediate steps to stem the flow of social homes into the private rented and owner occupied sectors by freezing current discount levels, preventing them from rising with inflation, and enabling councils to set the discount rate in their area according to local discretion.
  5. Implementing the measures committed to in the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023 and exploring long-term funding options for supported housing to provide much-needed accommodation for vulnerable groups.
    The Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight Act) was passed in 2023 and provides a range of powers to drive up standards. The next government should conclude recruitment for the national expert advisory panel, launch consultations on national standards for accommodation and for local authority licensing schemes, and work with the expert panel and wider sector to explore possibilities for a long-term revenue funding stream for supported housing. Quick action on the Act will enable developers to move forward with much-needed supported housing schemes with confidence, establishing an immediate pathway to growing the quality and quantity of accommodation and support for some vulnerable groups.  

Finally, whilst it would require some upfront investment, given the growing pressures on council budgets from rising homelessness the next government should also make money available to local authorities to acquire homes for temporary accommodation. This would generate considerable savings in the long run and relieve pressure on stretched LA budgets.

Rachael Williamson, Head of policy and external affairs at Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH)

The Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) is the professional body for people who work or have an interest in housing. We have approximately 17,000 members across the UK and are committed to working in partnership with the next government to build a future where everyone has a decent, safe, warm, accessible, and affordable place to call home.  

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

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

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

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

Sarah Sackman (testimonial written by Ross Houston)

Seat: Finchley and Golders Green

Previous MP: Mike Freer (stepping down in 2024)

Required swing to win: 9.7%

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

Andrew Lewin (testimonial written by Alison Inman)

Seat: Welwyn Hatfield

Previous MP: Grant Shapps

Required swing to win: 10.4%

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

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

Satvir Kaur (testimonial written by Sheila Spencer)

Seat: Southampton Test  

Required swing to win: none

Previous MP: Alan Whitehead (standing down in 2024)

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

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

Rachel Blake (testimonial written by Alex Toal)

Seat: Cities of London and Westminster

Required swing to win: 6.3%

Previous MP: Nickie Aiken (standing down in 2024)

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

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

Tracy Gilbert (testimonial written by Ross Houston)

Seat: Edinburgh North and Leith

Required swing to win: 10.9%

Previous MP: Deirdre Brock

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

Jayne Kirkham (testimonial written by Sheila Spencer)

Seat: Truro and Falmouth

Required swing to win: 4%

Previous MP: Cherilyn Mackrory

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

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

Dan Tomlinson (testimonial written by Ross Houston)

Seat: Chipping Barnet

Required swing to win: 4.6%

Previous MP: Theresa Villers  

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

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

David Smith (testimonial written by Sheila Spencer)

Seat: Northumberland North

Required swing to win: 16%

Previous MP: Anne-Marie Trevelyan

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