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Creating neighbourhoods, not just chasing targets, must be our planning ambition

Image by vjurleit licensed by pixabay

If Keir Starmer was to pick one success story this Christmas, it might be the growing momentum behind his government’s ambitions for housebuilding and planning reform. But as the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) showed in a new report last month, chasing housing targets cannot be the sole ambition. Creating neighbourhoods and communities matters as well.

This week we will get two major announcements on the government’s ambitions to build 1.5 million new homes. The first was announced on Monday: an overhaul of local planning committees to fast-track certain development. The second: confirmation on wide-reaching reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

Much of this is to be welcomed. It is good news that the government is showing the political will and ambition that will be needed to deliver meaningful reforms to the English planning system. We urgently need to increase the supply of new homes, and the first step must be to reduce the chronic uncertainty, delays and costs associated with getting a planning application approved.

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The only thing missing is the same ambition to improve the quality of the built environment. Although the government has expressed a commitment to improving good design and quality, we have yet to see meaningful action to back up their words. What we do know is to expect confirmation of the removal of six references to beauty within the NPPF. This follows the closure of the Office for Place (the body set up to help local authorities create beautiful, successful and enduring places) last month.

It is understandable that Labour ministers cringe at legacy bodies like the Office for Place and seemingly subjective references to beauty left by the last government. However, the decision to scrap both are a missed opportunity to promote good quality and attractive development, as well as to increase public support for housebuilding.

CSJ polling finds that the public are suspicious of development and are generally negative on how well new build housing contributes to the existing community. 62 per cent of adults say they have no meaningful say in how their area develops over time. 52 per cent say that local people do not have enough power to block new housing development. Nearly half (49 per cent) say that architects and planners are out of touch with what local people want in their community.

An emphasis on place-making and beauty are not just conservative concerns. Neither are they NIMBYism (not in my back yard) in disguise. In fact, there is a rich socialist heritage to draw on that emphasises objective goods in our built environment. For example, spaces which contribute to community life, improve the living conditions of the most disadvantaged, and tackle inequalities like air pollution’s disproportionate impact on the most deprived areas. As the post-war Labour Minister, Nye Bevan, once said: “While we shall be judged for a year or two by the number of houses we build…we shall be judged in ten years’ time by the type of houses we build.”

Looking back over the last decade, the previous government’s record on housing can be judged a failure on both counts. There is an affordability and quality crisis. An unhealthy built environment is fostering social ills like the epidemic of loneliness that government data published last week, shows is worse than ever before. A record 3.1 million adults said they felt lonely often or always last year.

The built environment is fundamentally associated with loneliness. For example, CSJ analysis has found a statistically significant relationship between loneliness and access to green space. Over half of adults who have access to green space never feel lonely. But for adults who have no access to green space, this relationship reverses. Over half say they feel lonely.

Green spaces, walkable streets, community infrastructure and gentle density all contribute to a beautiful and socially connected built environment. These are exactly the features that should be prioritised in design codes as a way of giving certainty to developers. These are documents which contain design requirements for the physical development of a site or area and can be produced in consultation with local people.

If you meet the criteria outlined in locally produced design codes, the answer to development applications should be a resounding yes. Whilst government has indicated their enthusiasm for design codes as a way of increasing building, the closure of the Office for Place which was set up to help local authorities actually do this, appears inconsistent.

Alongside the positive announcements this week, we need to see a tangible guarantee that the government will improve the quality and design of new housing across the country. In particular, how the work of the Office for Place is going to be continued by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The government should not miss the opportunity to bring the public along with them on the journey to 1.5 million new homes. If not, the political and social ramifications could be huge.

The government’s proposals for housebuilding are centred on economic growth. This is understandable and important. But growth should not be the only aim. The government must consider its duty to support the creation of places that foster social connection, community and belonging. A decade of national renewal depends on it.

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A plan to boost construction industry capacity to deliver 1.5 million homes

Image by abakumada licensed by pixabay

Moving from such a low base in home building to achieve ambitious targets in a relatively short time frame will create challenges in every aspect of how the construction industry operates.

The government must engage with all the key sectors of the construction industry that will have a role in delivering their planned large-scale home building programme and develop a capacity boosting plan. Also, this plan’s success will rely on its alignment with a training and skills capacity boosting initiative

Any proposed capacity boosting plan should include two key aspects:

  • Delivery capacity building – How to structure the overall design and building of homes, neighbourhoods and towns.
  • Organisation capacity building – How to structure the development corporations and other entities charged with developing homes, neighbourhoods and towns.
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Delivery Capacity Building

How Development Corporations should be set up

To facilitate the large-scale home building programme, local development corporations will need to be created from new, as happened with the creation of the post-war New Towns. The effort and time to build such organisations simultaneously  should not be underestimated,  and a plan to adopt a ‘lean model’ corporate template set-up should be established.

In simple terms, a ‘lean model’ would mean that development corporations would outsource a sizeable amount of their workload to private sector specialist consultancies, allowing them to focus on their core mission.

Engaging consultancies could  leverage their existing skills base and know-how, and share responsibility for capacity building to the private sector, spreading risks associated with development.. This approach would enable more efficient and accelerated project completions.

How Master Planned Developments should be built out

To build at scale, larger master plan developments will be needed. Whether these will be development corporations or other entities such as housing associations, councils or private developers, an ‘enabler’ approach involving sub-developers for various asset types should be used.

An ‘enabler’ approach would involve the master developer selling on parts of an overall master plan development to sub-developers while still maintaining a level of control.

This will allow for the sharing of the delivery burden and development risks allowing the overall delivery to be expedited while still maintaining overall master developer control.

The key to maintaining overall control of what is designed and built is for the master developer to have a comprehensive design guide for all parties involved to adhere to. A comprehensive design guide provides criteria specific for private sector consultants, construction contractors and sub-developers to work to while still allowing for innovation and a broader range of products and ideas from these other partners.

Some of the master plan developments will be new towns by definition and will be developed in accordance with the planned ‘New Towns Code’.

How Statutory Authorities Involvement should be streamlined

Local authority involvement via planning and building control departments is a critical component of delivering a mass home building programme so it is essential that there is an increase in funding and staffing levels. This was acknowledged in the last budget with a GBP £500m boost in funding exactly for this purpose.

In addition, there should be a plan to significantly increase the volume of developments that can be processed by consolidating local authority workloads. This can be achieved if the current reform of the planning regulations simplifies planning by zoning or other similar proposals.

This entails a designated area being provided with a set of development criteria such as land usage, type, height, set back dimensions, etc. If developments are designed to meet these there should be no need for the local planning authority to assess each development individually.

Why its essential to incorporate Modern Methods of Construction (MMC)

Embracing all of the current Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) on a substantial scale will also enhance delivery capacity by increasing build speed, reducing costs and reducing the need for skilled labour on site. The offsite factory mass production of building components or partially assembled units has mostly worked in the past where a large volume of residential, educational, medical or other assets have been needed.

MMC has faced some difficulties in recent years, partly due to a lack of a steady product supply line, with innovation and choice not at the level of countries where this is more prevalent. The large-scale build program will resolve the supply issue, but the government’s plan should be to reinvigorate the sector with some expertise from countries where MMC is better developed such as Germany. This could be done by creating a centre of excellence or sponsoring partnership L&D programmes for UK companies to learn from foreign companies.

The plan should include ‘modular kit homes’ for self-builds by individuals, small builders or developers. While self-builds would not contribute to public housing, the UK has much potential to develop this sector, offering direct competition to the professional home building developer sector as well as adding overall housing supply.

Organisational Capacity Building

Making Development Corporations centers of delivery excellence and best practice

As noted earlier,’ establishing a wave of new development corporations will be a feat in itself, and the know-how and skillsets required for this in the current market will be limited. In addition to the ‘lean model’ , to attract the best skilled individual people in a competitive market, these new corporations should prioritise becoming ’employers of choice.’

Being an ‘employer of choice’ by having a work environment, benefits and culture that attracts the best new joiners and retains existing employees should be complemented by a substantial training programme for graduates. This should be supported by educational and professional institutions, to cultivate a high ratio of trainees across various business roles. Opportunities for upskilling and training of staff in general should be part of this, and the development corporations should aim to set the benchmark in the industry.

How to effectively monitor and control a large-scale home building programme while its being delivered by many organisations

As part of building capacity, there needs to be central monitoring and control of this large-scale home building program across all delivery entities and all local authority areas to ensure there is a level of uniformity in monitoring metrics across the board in terms of value-for-money, delivery outcomes, good design, timelines, quality products, etc.

A development corporation or any other type of delivery organisation will monitor their development work and pass on collected data to a central overarching body such as a dedicated unit within the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). This data is used to decide what is and is not working and can be continually assessed to enable strategy updating over the life of the programme.

To achieve this, when development corporations are established, a standardised set-up template encompassing all corporate aspects should be used to streamline the establishment of the many required development corporations and other delivery entities, ensuring synergy, avoiding disruptions, and expediting delivery. Additionally, a best practice residential development delivery template should be used, covering investment, procurement, design and construct stage gates, complete with a Project Management Office (PMO) setup for every delivery entity.

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Green populism will not solve the housing crisis

Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, co-leaders of the Green Party, with Elllie Chowns, Housing and communities spokesperson. Image by Bristol Green Party licensed under public domain

One notable moment from the 2024 general election was the surprise success of the Green Party. The party more than doubled their vote to 6.7 percent, with four MPs. This followed a string of successful local election results, which has brought the party a total of 813 councillors.

The party also came in second place in 40 seats in 2024, up from just three in 2019, and they are within a five point swing of an additional five MPs.

For a long time, the political world has treated the Greens as a curiosity with interesting but ‘out there’ ideas. But, as the party’s electoral strength builds, it is worth taking a serious look at their policy offer.

This is particularly important in the housing sector, where their proposals rely on a mix of populist myth-peddling and blunt tools to address one of the most complex crises facing the country.

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What do the Greens stand for?

On housing, the Green Party Manifesto in 2024 had four main priorities:

  • A Right Homes, Right Place, Right Price Charter with new regulations for housebuilding
  • Investing into decarbonising housing
  • Delivering 150,000 social homes per year through purchasing existing homes and building new ones, including ending the Right to Buy
  • Regulating the private rental sector by allowing local authorities to introduce rent controls, ending ‘no fault’ evictions and introducing private residential tenancy boards to resolve disputes

Many of these policies are sensible, and several are being implemented by the Labour Government, including investment into housing decarbonisation, restricting the Right to Buy, and ending Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions. But the sum of these policies, alongside the Green Party’s actions outside of their manifesto, presents a worrying package which could have unintended consequences.

Stymying delivery

One notable moment of the election campaign was the refusal by the Greens’ co-leader, Carla Denyer, to support a housing target, despite being pressed on this three times by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

This is particularly problematic given that many of the Green Party’s policies would make housing delivery harder. The Party’s ‘Right Homes etc… Charter’ includes making councils spread development over small sites, which would eliminate economies of scale by larger development. Likewise, a mandate of Passivhaus Standard on all new homes in this charter would put substantial additional costs on construction with few measurable benefits to the Future Homes Standard currently being introduced by the Government.

Government policy should, of course, promote higher regulations and help smaller builders to create a more diverse industry. But mandating these high bars is a blunt tool for a complex problem.

Similarly, while academics argue the definition and the merits of rent controls, it is relatively well-established that the sort of direct control on rent levels suggested by the Greens has a negative impact on housing supply.  

Combined with the well-publicised history of Green councillors and MPs opposing new housing in their area, this amounts to a concerted effort to stymy housing supply.

This was also shown in the one recent occasion of sustained Green Party control over a local authority when they led Brighton from 2011 – 2015. Data from the Housing Delivery Test show that, in the aftermath of this control, Brighton only managed to deliver 77% of the homes it needed in 2015 – 2018, well below the 130% average of local authorities nationally. Meanwhile, data from 2019 – 2022, after four years of Labour control, shows the council delivering 130% of the homes required by the Delivery Test.

While many on the left may not be concerned with overall housing delivery, since these are mostly market rate homes from private developers, building these homes is crucial. Not only will this have a positive impact on rent levels, but it will result in more social housing being built, since Section 106 contributions from developers are responsible for delivering nearly half of all affordable and social housing. More private homes is, for now at least, key to more social homes. 

Focusing on housing myths

Meanwhile, the Greens have often peddled myths and mistruths in order to avoid focusing on real solutions.

The party’s response to Labour’s announced planning reforms was a perfect encapsulation of this, as the Greens’ Co-leader, Adrian Ramsey, claimed that:

  • There were a million empty homes, only a quarter of these are actually long-term empty
  • There were a million homes with planning permission that developers were refusing to build while not a straight debunk, a report by the Competition and Markets Authority showed, while developers do engage in a degree of ‘land banking’, this is largely due to uncertainty of a steady supply of homes, a symptom of our broken planning system which Labour seeks to reform.
  • That developers intentionally build over-large ‘executive homes’ the average newbuild home is in fact 20% smaller than its counterpart from the 1950s.

Similarly, the Greens’ manifesto included a completely redundant pledge on making developers pay for local infrastructure, which they already do through Section 106.

This was also reflected in Denyer’s answer when quizzed in the aforementioned Laura Kenssberg, where she said:

“The problem is that in so many parts of the country what we’re seeing being built is not what people need. For example what we see are large, out-of-town developments of luxury, executive homes, 4, 5, 6 bed, double garage, and yet no bus service, no doctors or dentists, no more school places. And to be honest they’re not affordable to most of the people living in the area.”

That a key part of a national political party’s housing messaging contains such blatant myths is worrying, and an irresponsible injection into the political discourse.

The allure of populism

But why focus on these areas, rather than have a discussion about the solutions needed?

In part, it may be because the Greens know that their policy platform is not yet one for national government, and so is more of a political document. Rather than providing solutions, it is instead a powerful tool to point fingers and identify ‘baddies’ that their voters can rally against.

This is exactly what its manifesto seeks to do. By advocating for rent controls, impractical or redundant development standards, and action on empty homes, it implies that all of the faults of the housing crisis are down to its ‘villains’, greedy landlords, overseas buyers and corner-cutting developers, and that regulating their activity is all that is needed to fix it.

Opposition allows minor parties the luxury of an incoherent policy platform, but the Greens’ success merits them being taken more seriously. And by playing such obvious political games, they are taking their voters for fools.

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A call for accessible housing

We are thrilled to have launched a powerful new campaign, led by a collaboration between Invisible Creations, our partner company PROCare, and Foundations, the National Body of Home Improvement. This initiative is calling on housing providers across the UK to create homes that are truly accessible for everyone.

Launched on July 11, 2024, at the House of Lords, our campaign aims to meet the growing needs of an ageing population and ensure that homes are designed to be accessible for all.

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The Growing Need

Did you know that 24% of the UK population lives with a disability(1), and 4 million of them are older adults with long-term health conditions?(2) As our population continues to age, the need for accessible homes has never been more urgent. At our launch event, Lord Richard Best put it perfectly, almost half of social housing residents are over 60. He made a powerful point: adapting our homes today will help people live independently and reduce pressure on our health and social care systems.

The importance of these changes goes beyond convenience. Falls, for instance, remain a leading cause of injury, particularly among older adults, with around 76,000 hip fractures occurring each year in the UK, costing the NHS over £2 million annually.(3) Preventive aids like grab rails and shower seats can significantly reduce the risk of falls, prevent emergency hospitalisations, and lower NHS costs by keeping people safer in their homes for longer.

Building the Right Future, Together

Dr. Rachel Russell and Paul Smith from Foundations, at the launch, shared their vision of affordable, simple changes like grab rails and shower seats that can transform lives. David Orr, Chair of Clarion Housing, also joined the conversation, stressing the importance of creating a national vision for accessible housing. He put it best when he said, “Let’s stop installing cheap, short-term solutions and focus on beautiful, sustainable changes that bring joy, safety, and independence.”

A Vision for the Future

At Invisible Creations and PROCare, we’re not just addressing today’s needs; we’re focused on designing homes that are future-proof. With over 20 years of experience, we’ve seen the profound impact of thoughtful design. We advocate for modern, intuitive features like sleek grab rails and contemporary, accessible kitchens and bathrooms, built in from the start to adapt to people’s changing mobility needs throughout their lives, empowering them to age in place and maintain their independence for longer. These changes can make a massive difference by promoting mobility, preventing falls, and providing peace of mind, all through thoughtful design and strategies for lasting change.

Why We Need Long-Term Solutions

The reality is that most homes in the UK don’t meet basic accessibility standards, and temporary adaptations often fail to provide lasting solutions. Many people resist accessible features until they’re absolutely necessary, often because these features are seen as low-quality and unattractive. When residents move out, they frequently remove these adaptations, leaving the property inaccessible for the next person.

This is where we need to rethink our approach to home design. What if we viewed adaptations not as short-term fixes, but as permanent, sustainable upgrades? By incorporating long-lasting materials, inclusive design concepts, and flexible components, we can create lasting solutions that benefit everyone and ensure homes are truly accessible for the long term.

A Call to Action

I’m urging all housing providers and professionals in the industry to join the Fit for Our Future movement. This is our chance to improve wellbeing, reduce accidents and waste, and make homes more adaptable for the future. Accessible housing isn’t just a temporary
fix, it’s a lasting investment.

We’re offering free resources and toolkits to help you take action and make homes more accessible for everyone. Together, we can create homes that not only meet today’s needs but are prepared for the challenges of tomorrow.

Visit www.fitforourfuture.today to learn more and get involved.

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Reform UK cannot win the argument on housing and migration

Nigel Farage MP (Clacton, Reform UK) by House of Commons is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

One of the surprises of the 2024 general election was Reform UK’s first real success at a Westminster election. Few would have guessed that Nigel Farage would be finally elected after seven attempts at Parliament, fewer that he would be joined by four Reform UK colleagues. Even more notable is that they came second in 98 (mostly Labour) constituencies, with 13 within a five percentage point swing.

Whether we like it or not, beating a currently minor party with little record or accountability will be a crucial part of securing the next Labour win at the general election. We have to take on the far right.

When it comes to housing this is particularly important, as Reform UK’s platform is as divisive as it is ineffective. So, what is Reform UK’s platform and why should it worry us?

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What does Reform UK stand for on housing?

Reform’s housing policy is relatively detailed, including:

  • ‘Loose fit planning’ policy for large developments, alongside brownfield passports to fast-track housing on urban land.
  • A “UK Connection test” for social housing so that “foreign nationals must go to the back of the queue. Not the front.”
  • Abolishing Section 24, which limits the amount of tax relief landlords can get on their residential properties.
  • Abolish the (then) Renters’ Reform Bill.
  • Minor reforms to leasehold to provide more clarity over charging and reduce the cost of renewing leases.
  • Modernise innovative construction practices.

Migration is not the problem

Key to Reform UK’s housing policies, and broader argument, is the myth that migrants take up an unfair share of UK social housing.

Since their election, several of Reform UK MPs have submitted questions regarding how many asylum seekers are being housed in social housing in their constituencies, only to be corrected by the Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook that asylum seekers are ineligible for social housing due to having no recourse to public funds.

This is an oft-touted myth on the far right, that all social housing is allocated more favourably towards non British nationals. This has been debunked in a number of ways:

  • Currently 90% of social housing residents are UK nationals, the same as their makeup of the national population.
  • 17% of people born in the UK live in social housing, compared to 18% of people not born in the UK.
  • Even if you want to take Reform UK’s bait of ‘non UK nationals’ meaning people outside of the ‘White British’ ethnicity classification, this is also untrue. The social housing survey shows that White British people are actually more likely to be in social housing than other ethnicities, comprising 77.6% of new tenures compared to 74.4% of the population.

This myth needs to be called out for what it is – a divisive attempt to create a bogeyman to justify the positions of Farage and his colleagues.

Caving in to vested interests

While claiming to stand up for the ‘little guy’ with this allocations policy, the rest of Reform UK’s platform is a clear pandering to those all benefitting from the housing crisis.

This is something which Reform UK is proud of, with Reform candidate David McLennan  saying during the election campaign “We’re very much a landlords’ party”. This is true in more than one sense, with former Deputy Leader Ben Habib CEO of First Property Group and current Deputy Leader and MP Richard Tice still listed as a Partner at Quidnet Capital, a real-estate focused investment group.

Meanwhile, their tax policy heavily favours those with already substantial funds, including eliminating stamp duty for properties below £750,000 (over twice the national average), raising the Inheritance Tax threshold fourfold to £2m, and abolishing Section 24.

Not only would this benefit landowners in general, but specifically landlords. This has been backed up by the party’s opposition to the Renters’ Rights Bill, which eliminates Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions while keeping a number of routes for landlords to evict unruly tenants, and implements basic standards of accountability to the sector.

Finally, while the party may have a fig leaf to increasing home-building, the actions of Reform MPs have clearly shown a pandering to their most NIMBY instincts. This has manifested in a number of written questions to Ministers including about:

A charlatan’s charter

It is clear from their policy platform that Reform UK have no serious plan to solve the housing crisis. Instead, their policy is based on clear disinformation, that migration is to blame for the UK’s housing shortage and that a pure deregulatory agenda will fix it.

Instead, they represent at best a lobby group for those whose interests lie in keeping the housing crisis unsolved, seeking to milk the housing crisis for all that it’s worth while failing to come up with any real solutions.

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Modern Methods of Construction: A solution to the linked crises in housing and construction skills

The housing crisis is one of the most pressing issues the UK faces; it demands innovative solutions from both the public and the private sector.

The ambition with which the new Labour Government has grasped this agenda is welcoming, particularly with their reforms to the planning system. But to achieve this mission and deliver 1.5m new homes, we have to do something to boost the output and capacity of the housebuilding industry.

Even with a much more favourable planning policy position, the shortage in construction skills will make this a challenging target to achieve. Already this year 38% of housebuilders surveyed by the Federation of Master Builders have reported skills shortages leading to delays in completing projects.

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Given the shortage we face in construction skills, Weston Homes believes that boosting the use of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) will be essential if we are to address the housing crisis in the UK.

British Offsite is Weston Group’s manufacturing subsidiary based in Essex, operating one of the largest automated assembly lines in Europe from our 180,000 sq ft factory. This one factory alone has the capacity to produce 7000 homes a year.

Using the latest Category 2 MMC technology, British Offsite uses advanced robotic assembly lines to create light gauge steel 2D panels, which are then assembled at pace on site.

Our panels arrive on-site with windows, doors, insulation, and fire stopping already installed. This integration of multiple components into a single panel reduces the need for various tradespeople, effectively combining the work of up to five trades into one.

Using this system, we can deliver apartments 30% faster and a single property 60% faster compared to traditional methods of construction.

Traditional building methods by comparison are slower and more labour intensive, and as we are currently facing a skills crisis in the construction sector, there are often delays and increased costs to projects as a result. We believe that greater use and support of Category 2 MMC technology in the housebuilding sector will be essential if we are to build the homes that Britain needs.

Another critical benefit of Category 2 MMC is the precision and quality it brings to construction. Factory-controlled environments allow for the production of components with exact specifications, produced in a warm and dry environment, ensuring a higher standard of quality compared to traditional methods. This precision translates to better-built homes that meet or exceed regulatory requirements for fire, thermal, and acoustic performance.

Furthermore, British Offsite’s technology is expected to exceed the requirements of the Future Homes Standard, though these are yet to be confirmed before they come into force in 2025. This will lead to better quality homes with fewer emissions and lower bills for households.

Category 2 Modern Methods of Construction present a viable solution to the UK’s housing crisis. By leveraging the speed, efficiency, and precision of MMC, we can overcome the challenges posed by skills shortages and deliver high-quality, sustainable homes at scale.

However, both Government and industry need support to scale up wider use of this innovation. The sector itself is often reluctant to move away from more traditional building models, such as brick/block and timber frame, but with more investment comes increased output.

This can come in two main forms: funding and planning. Grant funding for research into MMC and to help small companies get off the ground will help to avoid some of the pitfalls which have led pioneers in the industry to close doors prematurely. And giving weight in the planning system for developments delivered with MMC will be a win-win, supporting the sector while ensuring that more homes are delivered at pace with fewer emissions. Building for Britain will require an industrial strategy that recognises the critical importance advanced manufacturing and innovation in housebuilding. MMC is at the forefront of this transformation, offering a pathway to a more efficient, sustainable, and affordable housing market.

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A pragmatic approach to social housing, what the industry needs to develop a new generation of quality homes at pace

For more than 30 years we’ve witnessed a depletion of social and genuinely affordable housing stock, which has impacted all ages in every community in every part of the UK.

In England, when considering the shortage of social housing, we are experiencing a perfect storm. There are more than 1.2m households languishing on local authority waiting lists, an increased risk of households slipping into homelessness and a record number of households living in temporary accommodation. In addition, much of the current social housing stock is failing to meet decent homes standards, impacting the health and wellbeing of residents. It’s for that reason, we believe there’s a moral, societal and economic imperative which goes beyond party politics to address the imbalance and inequality in housing provision.

By supporting a revival in social and affordable housing across the UK, we believe it will be possible to restore the social fabric of our communities and promote a safer, healthier, and more inclusive society. For EDAROTH, this is not just about delivering new homes, this is also about trying to help address the housing challenge where it is most needed.

So, you may ask, how did we come to this conclusion, what are we doing about it, and who or what is EDAROTH?

In 2016, global professional services consultancy AtkinsRéalis was challenged by government officials to identify how it  could assist with the housing crisis. AtkinsRéalis methodically applied engineering acumen and rigor to understand the challenge, and where it could have an additive impact that would not disrupt the current housing supply pipeline. The firm immediately identified a huge shortfall in social housing compared to those being built for market sale, and the need to address that imbalance.

When considering where to deliver the additional homes needed, it adopted the same additive approach. Under-utilised and brownfield land owned by the public sector was identified as assets with untapped potential. This land is often ignored by traditional developers due to complexity and costly remediation. Linked to existing infrastructure, these sites frequently offer better-than-average access to education, healthcare, employment and economic centres. By utilising years of experience and expertise in land remediation, AtkinsRéalis recognised this as fertile ground for housing development.

Assessing the how, brought with it innovative thinking to deliver homes with minimum impact on existing construction supply chains. By adopting an industrialised approach utilizing modern methods of construction (MMC) as a preferred approach, AtkinsRéalis identified the how! This addressed some of the potential supply chain challenges and brought with it the opportunity to deliver high quality homes quicker, safer and at a reduced cost when compared like for like to traditional methods.

After four years of development AtkinsRéalis launched EDAROTH in January 2020, established with the purpose of exclusively assisting the public sector to generate social and economic value, while at the same time reducing their housing waiting lists.

But we didn’t stop there. The challenge that housing associations and local authorities are facing to maintain existing housing stock has been well reported. As EDAROTH we recognised that more needed to be done to slow the decline of existing social housing. By using digital operations and maintenance capability to provide predictive maintenance we can reduce the potential costs associated with traditional asset monitoring and repair. The ambition is to deliver improved outcomes for households, and communities, while reducing the cost burden of local authorities and housing associations.

So, who are we? EDAROTH represents both our brand name and our purpose. We believe that ‘everybody deserves a roof over their head’ and that everyone should have a place that they are proud to call home that is safe, secure and truly affordable. But, as you can hopefully see, this purpose is driven by a clearly identified need and understanding as to how and where we can responsibly have the greatest impact.  

What we need:

We welcome the Government’s pledge to deliver 1.5m homes over the next parliamentary term and vastly increase the delivery of new social and affordable homes. We wholly support the planning passport to fast-track brownfield developments, the utilisation of ‘grey belt’ land and creation of new towns to deliver the homes that are needed, where they are most needed.

To achieve the Government’s ambition, we believe that systemwide transformation is needed that takes an additive approach and avoids disrupting the existing market. While we agree that there’s opportunities to increase the level of 106 agreements with national housebuilders, we firmly believe this will not be enough to make up for the huge shortfall in social housing. Instead, government must also look towards SMEs and MMC housing developers who have the capacity to deliver the additional homes that are needed.

We believe the Government needs to reclassify social housing as infrastructure to stimulate investment. This transfers decision making into HM Treasury’s portfolio for evaluation in relation to the broader economy. This changes the risk profile to ‘Government backed’, which will attract funding at a lower rate. In conjunction with the delivery of MMC homes which can be smoother and quicker with additional cost certainty, it reduces the risk further which in turn reduce the cost of finance.

Housing policy is often subject to change and short termism. Providers of social and affordable housing confronted by inadequate funding and financial obstacles, including high interest rates, inflation, decarbonisation, and deteriorating conditions in existing housing stock. We endorse the G15’s proposal to establish a ‘Housing Commission’ as an expert body responsible for establishing housing goals and ensuring that the government fulfils its commitments.

Historical housing data proves that housebuilding in England and Wales only approached or exceeded 300,000 homes per year during periods with significant levels of local authority housebuilding. If we are to meet the demand to deliver social and affordable housing, local authorities and the wider public sector must be supported and incentivised to deliver the homes that are needed.

More must be done to tackle the temporary accommodation crisis. Analysis conducted by the Local Government Association in October 2023, indicated that the number of households in temporary accommodation had increased to its highest level since 1998, resulting in a crippling financial burden of at least £1.74 billion for councils. By utilising MMC to provide new social housing, we believe we will be able to provide the homes needed for households to transition into 50% quicker than traditional methods. This will release pressure from local authority budgets, while providing a lasting housing asset.

Restoring mandatory housebuilding targets previously scrapped by the previous Government will be a good step in the right direction. However, there is a very real need to speed up planning. Introducing a presumption in favour of social housing schemes that align with local design standards, not subject to discretionary decision will also deliver greater predictability and dramatically speed up planning permissions by up to six months. By extending that to include high quality, net zero fire-compliant MMC homes, we can drive innovation and deliver the homes of the future that our environment needs.

As an industry, we need to see a big increase in the volume and stability of the housing construction pipeline. A larger and predictable housing construction pipeline will, in turn, drive investment into growing capacity, and further drive efficiencies, while considerably reducing unit costs. Homes England has sought to address this through their strategic partnership grant programme, with all partners expected to deliver a minimum of 25% of new homes using MMC. This is a policy which needs to be fully enforced. The increased certainty will drive greater levels of private sector investment and much needed innovation within the housing sector.  

To fully understand and encapsulate the overall lifecycle development value of MMC the current appraisal model should be reformed to consider: financial, economic and social benefits of delivering more affordable housing quicker. This should include the value to society of net zero, social value, environmental performance; and ability to deliver better asset performance with lower maintenance costs across the full lifecycle of a development (cradle to grave). This will encourage innovation within the sector and encourage investment from financial markets through a change in appraisal modelling. 

In conclusion

For 30 years, successive governments have failed to grasp the nettle to address the lack of new social housing being built across the UK. The imperative is there, and new thinking is needed from local and central government. To drive that change, we believe there needs to be greater transparency and accountability, with departmental resources dedicated to deliver social housing as a singular task.

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. It will require collaboration, market intervention and accountability to make it a reality.

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The Renters’ Rights Bill holds promise, but beware the tailless rats

Roupell St / SE1 by Images George Rex is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

“The best laid schemes of mice and men, go often askew”; a warning a century and a half ago by the poet Robert Burns, on how even our most well-intended ideas may fail or falter by virtue of unintended consequences.

It is a parable that perhaps should have been heeded 100 years later in Hanoi, French Indochina (now Vietnam). As rat populations in the city ballooned beyond control amid the construction of a new sewer system, the French colonial rulers devised a solution: a bounty programme. For every severed rat tail – proof of an eliminated rodent – the government would pay a small fee to the exterminator.

Colonial figures soon realised the oversight in their rush to quell the crisis, however. Criminal enterprises had shifted their focus to farming, as the city’s shadowy suburbs became the breeding ground of rats and a new source of income. The result was a city now overrun with more rats than ever – most of them tailless.

This analogy is not without cause. The case for reform in the private rented sector has been mounting for some time, and has been spurred after hundreds of seats went from blue to red over the summer. The new Labour Government has signalled its commitment to renters, armed with a strengthened Renters’ Rights Bill and a haste to act.

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But as the Bill passes to Committee Stage, Parliament must recognise the risk of unintended consequences.

The end of Section 21 has always been the centrepiece of this legislation. But even this – as detailed in a recent report we supported from our colleagues at the Renters’ Reform Coalition – runs the risk of a rise in illegal evictions by criminal landlords.

The speed of this Bill is commendable, but caution must persist. Those watching the Second Reading will have noted the Secretary of State’s refusal to commit to publishing an impact assessment. Given the wide-ranging impacts of the Bill, failure to produce one is unwise.

We are, however, greatly encouraged by the announcement of the Bill’s public consultation. Our contribution concerns one key issue: Ground 6A.

Ground 6A is a proposed mandatory ground for eviction that would see renters removed from their homes with no defence to the claim, in instances where a landlord has breached legislation.

The aim of Ground 6A is to provide landlords with a route to vacant possession in order to avoid a range of sanctions that could be imposed by local authority enforcement teams where a breach to housing law has been made and also, theoretically, to offer renters protections from the health and safety hazards or criminal landlord behaviour.

The Ground supposes that, should a local authority decide that a landlord’s leasing of a property is unlawful, that landlord will be subject to further fines or sanctions until the tenants are evicted, which under the new regime they cannot be without Ground 6A’s existence (unless the landlord decides to sell).

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However, in reality, it is Ground 6A itself which will force landlords to evict renters or face fines. If evicting renters was the only way to comply with enforcement action and such an eviction was impossible, the landlord would clearly have a ‘reasonable excuse’, which in the Housing Act 2004 provides a complete defence to all of the potential offences they might be charged with.

Once the option to evict tenants because of enforcement action exists, such a reasonable defence completely disappears and eviction becomes the only option, even when tenants have nowhere else to go or when the property is in good condition.

Thus, in effect the worst criminal landlord behaviour is paid for by the renter necessarily losing any tenancy rights whatsoever – a moral and logical contradiction to the intentions of the Bill.

This, therefore, will create an enormous incentive for the worst-offending landlords to evict at no fault of the renter: the very problem that the abolition of Section 21 – one of the core principles of the Bill – is seeking to remediate.

But while this potential policy outcome seems nonsensical and punitive, it is far from the only consequence.

From evidence we’ve gathered, we know it is commonplace for landlords in the shadow private rental sector to routinely warn renters that the council will evict them should they complain. This is spurious and arguably a form of coercion, and without an amendment to this Ground, encourages this kind of exploitation and fatally undermines the whole purpose of the Bill: to protect renters from criminal landlords.

Just when local authorities need their powers of enforcement enhanced, this would likely diminish the effectiveness of their enforcement strategies as the worst conditions are pushed underground.

Prior to the Government’s Amendment 1 to the Bill, Ground 6A would shift the burden and costs of providing appropriate housing away from the non-compliant landlord and onto either the renter or the local authority, with costly temporary accommodation the likely destination. The amendment will order the landlord to pay compensation to the tenant where possession is obtained on Ground 6A.

An improvement certainly, but insufficient in real terms too. For one thing, the possession order is not conditional on the compensation payment being made, so many landlords will simply not pay the compensation in our view.

This would be an offence against natural justice: a landlord is in breach of the law but neither the renter, nor the local authority enforcement teams, are incentivised to pursue action because either, if not both, are faced with the social and financial consequences that should rightly fall to the landlord. Renters are thus faced with the question: do they seek action but face homelessness or continue to live under the criminal conditions of their landlord?  This is not the renters’ justice we expected.

Within the wider framework of the Bill – much of it enormously positive – it may feel finicky to focus all of our attention on the ‘small print’ of Ground 6A. But this, like Hanoi’s rat programme, could create far reaching and unintended consequences, with both renters and local authorities incentivised not to act. The criminal landlord, meanwhile – whose lies are now emboldened by law –  is free to act nefariously and with impunity.

Given the breadth of this Bill, and its public prominence, the new Government must heed the lessons of Hanoi. We do not wish for the Renters’ Rights Bill to leave the Government holding redundant rattails with only hindsight.

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The Autumn Budget: What is in it for housing?

The Chancellor visits Liverpool by HM Treasury is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Today was a first in a number of ways. It marked the first Labour budget in fourteen years, and the first budget ever delivered by a female Chancellor.

But it is also the most ambitious set of measures for the housing sector in quite some time, with a number of policies contained designed to get Britain building, deliver the next generation of social housing, and address some of the stark inequalities in the housing system as a whole.

Investing in delivery

The past few years have seen a slump in affordable housebuilding, particularly in the areas of highest need, with the number of homes started by London-based housing associations down by 92% this year. This is due to a number of reasons, including the increased cost of building, and also a focus on the sector’s existing stock after the passage of much-needed regulation including Awaab’s Law and the Building Safety Act.

It was therefore pleasing to see that one of the headline announcements from the Budget was a £500m top-up to the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP). This was a programme started under the last Government to deliver £11.5bn of funding to the affordable housing sector from 2021 – 26.

The additional £500m represents a 10% per annum increase in the value of the fund from 2025-6, which will be particularly useful given the aforementioned pressures on registered providers, and should hopefully allow them to top-up existing project funding as well as starting new ventures.  This funding is also boosted by the confirmation of a five-year rent settlement for social housing providers, under which their rents will be able to increase by CPI +1%. This will provide much needed certainty to the sector after years of more haphazard policymaking.

What’s more, this budget saw additional funding dedicated towards more general housing delivery, including:

  • £3bn in support and guarantees to increase the supply of homes and support small housebuilders.
  • £128m to new housing projects to support the deliver of 33,000 homes
  • A £36m investment in the planning system to boost local authority skills provision, including recruiting the 300 new planners promised in Labour’s manifesto.
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Bringing existing homes up to date

The UK famously has among the oldest and leakiest housing stock in Europe. This is consequential for a number of reasons: consumers’ bills are higher, buildings emit more carbon, and homes are worse for residents’ health.

This budget saw a clear effort to address that, with a £3.4 billion investment into the government’s new Warm Homes Programme as part of the Government’s mission to bring all homes up to EPC C by 2030.

This programme will be transformational for consumers. It will significantly reduce bills and with it emissions from the built environment, and much of the retrofitting work entailed will have knock-on benefits for resident’s health.  

Particularly welcoming was the £1bn dedicated to cladding remediation – this has been called for by those trapped in unsafe blocks and will meaningfully accelerate the removal of dangerous cladding.

Severely restricting the Right to Buy

The Right to Buy, the policy which enables council tenants to buy their homes at a discounted rate, has often been criticised as an unhelpful drain on social housing at the time when lists of people applying for social housing are at their highest. Since discounts were increased by the coalition in 2012, this scheme has accelerated to seeing 10,000 – 12,000 homes lost per year, which are often difficult to replace.

After a review over the summer, this budget saw the government confirm their intention to heavily reduce discounts for the Right to Buy scheme, alongside increasing the time period for a which a tenant has had to live in, and providing additional exemptions for newly built council homes.

This not only undoes some of the worst reforms made under the Coalition Government but places brand new restrictions on the Right to Buy, and so there is hope that sales may dip even below the rates of 4,000 – 5,000 seen in the latter years of the Blair-Brown Governments.

It has also been confirmed that councils will keep 100% of the receipts from sales, making it easier for them to build new homes to supplement those lost from the scheme.

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Taxing housing more fairly

Finally, the budget sought to change the perverse incentives which help to drive inequality in the housing market. At present, many landlords buy up property in the private rental sector as an investment, and happily admit to seeing themselves more as investors than as professional landlords. Similarly, those who are at the lucky enough to own their own homes are able to pass a substantial amount of the value of that home to their children upon death, dividing Britain starkly between those with family property and those without.

This budget saw moves to amend this inequality, with stamp duty rates for second home and capital gains tax increased, while income tax thresholds will be unfrozen from 2028. This marks a substantial change in the tax system to prioritise those seeking to get onto the housing ladder at the expense of those who earn more than property, either as a property owner or as a landlord, while supporting those who derive income from work.

Welcome progress, but more funding will be needed

All of the money delivered in this budget is welcome, and sorely needed. But more will still be needed to achieve the government’s housing goals.

The National Housing Federation has estimated that £4.6bn per year will be needed to deliver the step change in affordable housing needed to meet Labour’s manifesto goals, nearly double of the programme inherited from the Tories.

More investment is also always welcome in directly preventing and tackling homelessness, and in reviving the Supporting People Programme ended by the Tories, but which was estimated to generate £2 for every £1 spent in supporting social housing residents.

Ministers have indicated that this is only the start of Labour’s plans to drive investment in the economy, and we will have to look to the Spending Review taking place over the winter for signals of what departmental budgets will look like in the coming years. Key priorities will be ensuring that the Local Housing Allowance and housing benefit continue to be uprated so that those at the sharpest end of the housing crisis have the support they need.

But the sector must continue to call for these changes and the spending needed to support the government’s aim of ending the housing crisis.

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More Homes, Less Motor Traffic: Can We Have Both?

Park Life by stanvpeterson is licensed under Pixabay content license

The Government has been widely praised for its ambition to build 1.5m new homes over the coming parliament. However, it must now seize the opportunity to make them attractive, sustainable and affordable to live in, by locating and designing them so that people can easily get around without always depending on private cars.

This means doing things very different from the low-density housing sprawl which has spread across the countryside over the past several decades, with poor public transport access and with large amounts of land given over to car-parking.

Not only does this starve communities of attractive public or green open spaces, but it makes it harder to provide economically-viable public transport services.

It also means that schools, shops, healthcare, green open spaces and other key destinations end up being further from people’s homes. If these facilities aren’t within an easy walk, people will inevitably jump in their cars.

Yet that in turn makes it even more unattractive and dangerous to try walking or cycling, or to allow your children to do so. The streets become filled with motor traffic but little else – with nowhere for children to play and no street life.

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Motor traffic on Britain’s roads has nearly doubled since 1980 and has increased 10-fold since 1950. Car-dependent planning has contributed greatly to this problem. Alarmingly, these trends are set to continue – government projections suggest motor traffic could carry on growing by up to 54% more by 2060.

Rising motor traffic undermines all of the alternatives. It makes walking and cycling more unpleasant and dangerous, while slowing down public transport and reducing the number of people using it. As the frequency and reliability of public transport worsens, ridership falls further, causing a downward spiral.

This obviously adds to the crises of physical inactivity, road casualties, air pollution and climate change – surface transport is now the largest emitting sector of the UK economy. It also makes life much harder for those without access to cars or who, for whatever reason, cannot drive.

If we want to avoid the aforementioned predicted 54% increase in motor traffic, we must adopt a very different approach. We need to take inspiration from housing developments elsewhere in Europe – though there are also a few great home-grown examples of good practice too such as Marmalade Lane, a 42-home car-free development on the outskirts of Cambridge.

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The Low Traffic Future alliance brings together a range of organisations with interests in the environment, health, road safety and sustainability. We have proposed that new housing should take the form of “close-knit communities”. These would be places where:

  • Schools, shops, doctors, dentists etc are close to where people live;
  • People can reach these and other key destinations easily by walking, wheeling or cycling and/or by local public, shared or community transport, from the moment the development opens; and
  • Motor traffic is therefore kept in check, because the alternatives are easier, safer, pleasanter and cheaper.

This approach would fit far better with Labour’s 5 missions, by:

It requires us to build to ‘gentle densities’. That means neither the dehumanising high densities of tower blocks nor the unsustainability of low-density suburbs. Instead, it means building spacious apartment blocks of around 6 storeys, preferably with shared garden areas.

Gentle-density housing can look attractive, have plenty of space both indoors and outdoors, while taking up less land – research by think tank Create Streets has shown that the same number of homes built at this density can occupy just 40% of the land needed for standard UK-style housing.

Encouragingly, the Government’s new draft National Planning Policy Framework proposes a ‘vision-led approach’ to transport and land-use planning. This is intended to replace the old ‘predict and provide’ approach, which assumed that road traffic would inevitably grow in the future, and therefore required roads to be provided for that growth. That, of course, has been a terrible self-fulfilling prophecy.

But if this new ‘vision-led approach’ is to work, government needs to spell out the ‘vision’ that it wants local authorities and developers to be led by – and to do this in a way that will hold up when tested at public inquiries.

The ‘vision’ must be one where developments produce no net increase in motor traffic, thanks to high but ‘gentle’ densities and good sustainable transport connectivity to key destinations. There must also be a transparent test of density and sustainable transport connectivity which local authorities, developers and local communities can all use to determine which proposals are suitable and which are not.

There is one other really important benefit of getting this right. By avoiding adding to motor traffic pressures on local roads, ‘close-knit communities’ are far likelier to be popular and far less likely to face objections.

They would also be good for our health and wellbeing, good for the local and global environment, and good for getting plenty of homes delivered with minimal loss of land and minimal objections. What’s not to like?

If you agree that future housing developments should take the form of ‘Close-knit communities’, to help reduce car-dependence, please email your MP, via https://lowtrafficfuture.org.uk/closeknitcommunities