We have commented before on Red Brick about the way this Government has downgraded equality impact assessments as part of the policy-making and legislative processes. Under Labour they became a vital part of the process of scrutiny.
By looking at policy proposals from the perspective of defined groups in the population who may be advantaged or disadvantaged by the changes, the process requires civil servants and the Government to think more and reveal more about how the policy will work in practice.
There will be lots of attention on Hammersmith and Fulham’s new allocations policy given their stated aims for social housing.
I wanted to draw out one element: there will be limits on those who can join the housing register. In Hammersmith and Fulham’s case, only those in housing need and only those earning under £40,000 will have their applications accepted.
The double dip recession was driven by cuts in public spending on housing. That’s the conclusion of Ben Chu in the ‘Eagle Eye’ Econoblog in the Independent.
Commenting on the ONS revised construction figures for the first quarter of 2012, he points out that the construction sector shrank by nearly 5% over the three months. While private housing construction rose by 1.3%, new public housing construction fell by 10.9%. General infrastructure investment fell 15.9%: the statistics do not split public/private but the majority of big projects are commissioned by Government.
By Monimbo
Undeterred by Red Brick’s comprehensive explanation of how the right wing think tank Policy Exchange failed to predict the deterioration in the government’s housing performance, and of its very limited success in prescribing policies that the government has been willing to pursue, its communications director Nick Faith is now urging the government to build ‘thousands of new, good quality homes – especially in northern, urban areas’.
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Tempa T on Housing
You don’t get a lot of grime on Red Brick – but I think as a policy platform Tempa T does a decent job here: house prices, inequality, empty homes, quality and space standards.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDS1eGZassk]
IPPR – the Institute for Public Policy Research – releases two important and well-argued reports today as part of their comprehensive review of housing policy. Some common themes emerge even though there couldn’t be a stronger contrast between the geographical focus of the reports: ‘Alike in Dignity’ looks mainly at Bradford, ‘Affordable Capital’ follows a more well-trodden path in looking at London.
One of the reasons I like the reports is that they do not look at housing in isolation, but develop a narrative that brings together housing, benefits policy, and the needs of the local economy, especially in relation to jobs and incomes. Housing policy has been bedevilled by the separation between the two Whitehall silos of Communities and Local Government on the one hand and Work and Pensions on the other. By far the biggest flow of money into housing – housing benefit – has had little to do with delivering strategic housing objectives, and IPPR is making a big contribution to bringing these separate worlds together.
This may or may not lead logically to supporting IPPR’s developing position in favour of the localisation of housing benefits. The reports both argue the case, showing how different circumstances in each area lead to a clear need for housing benefit policies to be tailored to local requirements – for example enabling the better matching of rates, thresholds and caps. They point out that localisation would require housing benefit to be taken out of the proposed Universal Credit, and there are other reasons for supporting that.
I must admit to a deep-seated fear that the outcome of localisation might be worse not better, so I need to wrestle with these arguments a bit longer. It may be just that I have a deep-seated fear of Boris Johnson, because I can see the case for localisation more clearly in London, where the Mayor oversees an entire region, than other parts of the country where accountable regional institutions are weak or non-existent and there is often little relationship between local government boundaries and housing markets or journey to work areas.
A second common theme is the irresistible case IPPR make for a new ‘something for something’ deal with the private rented sector, based on accreditation and a new mechanism for rent stabilisation like the New York model. Local priorities might vary – for example if the dominant PRS issue is standards or rents – but the sector must become a more important concern for local government as more and more families are accommodated in it, including more vulnerable households. It is a simple quid pro quo: the amount of money pouring into the sector should also be capable of delivering increasing professionalisation of management, less bad practice and improving standards.
The focus on Bradford is welcome following the recent controversial by-election. IPPR shows how it is England’s most economically polarised district, with the biggest gap between its most and least deprived areas, including between housing ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. Those on the lowest incomes and living in the cheapest areas still face the worst affordability constraints, measured as the proportion of their income taken up by rent. The areas with high concentrations of low income households are also associated with the poorest quality housing stock, overcrowding on the one hand and empty properties on the other.
There are a couple of points in the London report that are worth highlighting as well. IPPR says that London is different – although not detached – from the rest of the country and that its uniqueness as a world city requires unique policies. Despite the mayor’s new powers and control over public housing investment resources, the London housing strategy is largely just a restatement of the dogma of national policy.
IPPR is highly persuasive in arguing for a regional increase (they propose £10 per week) in the local housing allowance caps. This relatively small adjustment would mean that the majority of claimants would not lose out as a result of the reforms, and that all of the others would see their losses reduced accordingly.
They also support the introduction of new taxes on the foreign buyers of prime London property. A huge proportion of turnover in London – with inflationary consequences across the housing market – has been based on foreign money, much of it a flight of capital from volatile economies (Russia then Greece and now apparently Italy). Recycling some of this wealth seems a good idea in principle although finding a regime which has stickability when put up against legions of tax consultants and lawyers may be the real challenge.
Both reports have a wealth of data and analysis and are well worth downloading.
Guest blogger Bill Peters writes
In the latest Inside Housing (4 May 2012) the current Minister Grant Shapps tells us ‘the future is bright’ and particularly in relation to social housing. While accepting that the government has challenged some of the conventions by which social housing has been run, this process was already underway under Labour. Moreover does he really think that his rather glib claim to have put strong foundations in place for a bigger and more viable social housing sector really convince anyone?
Mr Shapps spends a lot of time talking up his modest spending and policy commitments while pretending not to notice the deepening housing crisis which he is presiding over.
By contrast, today’s CLG Select committee report on housing finance and supply is a more considered reflection on where we are and where we need to be. It rather generously suggests Mr Shapps’ Laying the Foundations is a start but then argues the need for more investment to tackle the palpable housing shortage. The Committee recommends large-scale investment from institutions and pension funds, changes to the financing of housing associations, including a new role for the historic grant on their balance sheets, greater financial freedoms for local authorities and new and innovative models, including a massive expansion of self-build housing.
There is much food for thought here and it is important that the report is considered carefully and acted upon rather than batted away as is often the case. The reality is CLG has been lacking any detailed strategy based on an assessment of needs now and into the future – the report takes us in this direction. Housing should be leading the UK out of recession rather than driving it ever further into it through limited vision and leadership and a failure to secure the necessary resources from both the Treasury and the market.
Perhaps sound bites can take a back seat for a while and we can get down to some serious policy work?
Categories
Raise the dented shield
Labour did stunningly well all over the country and we have many new Labour Councils who I hope will promote a strong housing agenda: more genuinely affordable homes, regulation of the private sector, searching out a humane response to dealing with the ending of the homelessness safety net and the cuts to housing benefit.
Labour Councils will face huge difficulties with little money and a Government which is following rigidly a high rent, no rights housing policy in the desperate hope that the market will respond. They will have to make appallingly hard choices but, as Neil Kinnock once said, better a dented shield than no shield at all.
The tragedy of London is that it is a Labour city but the Tories walked away with the spoils: the mayor holds all the housing powers and what little money is left. It bodes ill for Londoners: there will be no shield at all for them. Housing output will be nowhere near affordable, the proportion of earnings spent on housing will continue to rise, and the private rented sector will continue as the last unreformed and unmodernised great industry.
Andy Slaughter was spot on with his analysis of the real Tory agenda: few if any planning consents for new social rented housing; demolition without affordable replacement of social housing estates in valuable places; selling council properties without like-for-like replacement; and insecure and unaffordable new tenancies becoming commonplace in the social as well as the private rented sector.
Personally I’d rather have H’Angus the monkey as mayor than Boris Johnson. At least H’Angus campaigned on the policy of giving children free bananas when he won Hartelepool.
We will all have our theories as to why Ken Livingstone lost against such a benign political background. They say familiarity breeds contempt and there might be a bit of that after 40 years of seeing Ken on the London stage. There is no doubt that Boris Johnson the personality is a phenomenon unmatched in British politics (even if he makes my skin creep). His next target is Cameron and I’ll enjoy watching that battle unfold. But Johnson could have been beaten.
I certainly don’t agree with Peter Kellner and Tony Travers on the BBC (why don’t they have to declare their financial interests before commenting?) that it has nothing to do with the media. The personal vilification of Livingstone, the anti-Ken propaganda handed out to Londoners every day (called the Evening Standard), the supine broadcast media who just follow the papers wherever they go, and the overwhelmingly negative Johnson campaign, all had their impact. The media bias sets agendas: Ken’s tax affairs became a huge and genuinely damaging issue (unfairly in my view) whilst Johnson’s extensive contacts with the Murdochs hardly got a mention. Although at its peak it was excellent, the London Labour campaign machine seemed to take ages to get organised, with several changes of personnel. Add the damage done by the ‘hold your nose and vote Ken’ brigade, a few genuine backstabbers (Sugar, Clarke and Labour Uncut come to mind), and the result is the narrowest of defeats. If I can campaign for James Callaghan in 1979 and Tony Blair in 2005 these people can campaign for Ken Livingstone in 2012. It’s called political discipline and it means, whatever you do, you don’t let the Tories in because they really hurt people. Ken could have done better but we all could have done better, and we should have won. Let the lessons be learned.
The one thing that cannot be disputed is Ken’s housing record. I got annoyed by the Shelter and NHF line that the candidates weren’t talking about housing. Ken was, from the off and every time he got to his feet. Almost his first policy statement was about the private rented sector, the lettings agency and the London Living Rent – it was unexpected, innovative, and deserved much more coverage.
For 40 years, from Lambeth to Camden, from the GLC to the GLA, Ken has promoted housebuilding and genuinely affordable housing for Londoners. He has never been embarrassed to talk about Council housing. Given no housing powers and no money in 2000 when first elected mayor, Ken transformed housing prospects in London in an extraordinarily creative way, leaving in 2008 with a clear housing strategy for the capital and the biggest affordable housing programme in its history. It was a strategy for all: he invented the whole business of intermediate housing as a planning tool to help people in the middle as well. The achievement is nothing short of phenomenal.
This may be Ken’s last election campaign but I doubt if it is his last campaign. If he and Boris are both one of a kind, give me Ken’s kind every time.
The borough of Hammersmith and Fulham has become the laboratory for national Government housing policy. Where H&F goes first, the Government will follow. And the policy at present is to deliver no extra social rented housing despite the borough’s housing needs.
Here, the Labour MP for Hammersmith, Andy Slaughter
, sifts through the evidence.
Housing Benefit costs in London are so high because there is a shortage of affordable housing, and in particular social rented housing. Under Gordon Brown the Labour Government began to build new social homes, but this has now almost entirely stopped. The explanation, at least for the cuts in Social Housing Grant, is austerity economics, although other projects to stimulate the construction industry are going ahead.
But this is not the true picture. Tory policy is actually to eradicate social rented housing, or confine it to perhaps 10% of current tenants, those with physical or mental health conditions requiring supported housing. Just as the blueprint for current policy (as enacted in the Localism Act) can be read in the 2008 publication, Principles Of Social Housing Reform, so the practice in Hammersmith & Fulham (‘Cameron’s favourite council’ and the ‘apple’ of Eric Pickle’s eye) shows how council and housing association homes can be gradually extinguished nationwide.
Pickles and Shapps were both briefed on the 2008 discussions and Shapps attended the seminar which drew up the key elements of H&F policy and discussed social rented housing in disparaging terms.
Here are the four main techniques currently being used to socially and politically change the population of the borough.
1. No Planning Consents For Social Housing
At least 13,000 new homes will be given planning consent in Hammersmith & Fulham this year on current plans. Not one will be an additional social home for rent. This is despite Boris Johnson’s London Plan requiring 25% social rented homes in any such new development, a waiting list of 8,000 families many of whom live in very overcrowded or unfit dwellings and have waited five years or more for re-housing, and only 6% of private accommodation likely to affordable to HB claimants under new benefit regulations. H&F is one of the councils moving residents to Derby and Nottingham.
2. Demolition
The first major demolition scheme is of 761 good-quality, popular, recently-refurbished houses and flats in West Kensington
After much lobbying the Council did agree to ‘replace’ the demolished flats somewhere in the development area (which will include 7,500 new flats). Whether residents, many of whom are freeholders or leaseholders, elderly people or temporary tenants will take up this offer is doubtful, given the site will be developed over 20 years.
The development is mired in controversy, from the £105 million windfall the Council will get for delivering vacant possession, the dubious nature of the developer and lack of due diligence, or the refusal to take residents’ views into account. They voted 3:1 against the scheme in last month’s consultation on a 70% turnout but the Council is pressing on
3. Selling council properties
300 council homes are currently being sold by auction to raise in excess of £100 million. These appear to be selling undervalue, and can only be sold to developers rather than prospective residents under Government rules. One featured in the BBC programme Under the Hammer.
The first call for the proceeds of sale is likely to be the purchase of leasehold and freehold interests in West Kensington so vacant possession can be delivered to the developer, despite earlier claims that they would be reinvested in housing.
4. New tenancies
The Council’s new tenancy strategy, which we have been leaked in draft but will not be published until after the Mayoral Election, takes advantage of the Localism Act, the housing sections of which mirror Principles of Social Housing Reform.
- Short term (2-5 year) tenancies with no right of succession,
- Up to 80% market rents (an increase typically of 2-300%)
- Discharge of housing duties permanently into the private sector, almost exclusively outside the borough
- Allocation of Council accommodation no longer on the basis of need.
The real housing argument is about building homes for social rent for households on low incomes. The Tories clearly do not want to build any. The argument about Housing Benefit costs versus displacing thousands or families, and the economic and social costs that will follow, is a false choice.
By guest blogger Bill Peters
The latest planning application figures published by CLG give little comfort to the view that we are seeing a resurgent housebuilding sector emerging on the back of the New Homes Bonus and generous government support to the housebuilding industry. (For background on the NHB see this House of Commons Library paper and previous Red Brick posts).
It is of course hard to disentangle the NHB impact given the data is not readily available and it sits at odds with the more traditional housing starts and completions data sets. The Hansard record of the debates between Shapps and the eagle eyed Nick Raynsford (including for example this one) point up the fact that the NHB output includes empty homes coming back into use and a large number of new one bedroom flats which seem either to be conversions of existing larger and possibly multi-occupied homes plus new student residences.
Either way the evidence regarding the incentive effects of NHB are very poor to date raising the question about whether it is fit for purpose as a central plank of housing supply policy.
Alongside this is the funding and support given to the housebuilding industry in a variety of schemes – FirstBuy, NewBuy, Build now Pay Later, Get Britain Building and more. There appears to have been no stated agreement with the housebuilding industry about increasing output on the back of this support, rather it has been used to underpin existing balance sheets and to secure viability much in the same way as help to mortgage lenders did, though there at least targets re small business lending were imposed.
As matters stand we have the flimsiest of housing policies backed onto a weak housing market. If and when the economy and that market recover any vitality the government is going to look very exposed.
No doubt Grant Shapps is hoping by then he will have got another job. However if the current unravelling continues – the Newham relocations being the latest – he may never get one!