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A plan to boost skills in the construction industry to deliver 1.5m homes

The Current Skills Problem

The UK construction industry has faced a longstanding skills deficit, and this is expected to worsen as it prepares for one of the largest build programs since the post-war era. Demand for construction work has risen, but there are not enough entrants to meet this demand. An estimated 24,400 newly qualified apprentices are needed each year, with subcontractor trades particularly struggling to attract young talent. According to the UK Trade Skills Index 2024, the industry needs 1,265,000 new recruits over the next decade.

An additional 251,500 workers will be required to meet UK construction output by 2028. However, more people are leaving the industry than joining it, according to the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB).

To support the ambitious goal of building 1.5 million homes, a plan to boost skills is essential. Without this, all other aspects of the strategy are at risk of failing.

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Fixing the Skills Problem with a Plan to Boost Skills

The government must collaborate with key sectors in construction to develop a Skills Plan that supports its large-scale homebuilding program. This plan should address the root causes of the skills shortage, starting with areas of consensus, including the following:

1. Engage the Younger Generation

To attract more young talent to the construction sector, employers can offer flexible working options such as job sharing, part-time hours, and better work-life balance. Expanding high-quality apprenticeships, traineeships, and upskilling initiatives will help retain a younger workforce.

A supportive approach, including positive messaging and targeted promotion on social media platforms, can also help attract young people. The government, working with the CITB, trade bodies, and unions, could establish a coordinated social media strategy to counter negative perceptions. Research from YouGov shows that 69% of adults would not consider a construction career, associating the industry with being “dirty, stressful, and unsafe.” By highlighting the sector’s digital innovations, quality engineering, new technology, and the benefits of skilled careers, these perceptions could be challenged.

Increasing initiatives like Apprenticeship Week, job fairs, and school visit programs, led by professional institutions and associations, would further engage young people. Institutes such as the Institute of Civil Engineers and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors already promote high-quality professional apprenticeships, which can serve as models for other sectors.

2. Upskilling Existing Workforce

Instead of relying on migrant workers, the construction industry should focus on upskilling the existing UK workforce, particularly at the trade level. Since it takes time to train and upskill workers, it is this area that requires the most transformational change to train British workers for roles in high demand.

The CITB plays a central role in skills training, particularly for trade roles. However, it has faced criticism from industry bodies and major contractors, leading to reforms in 2017. The government’s most recent review of the CITB’s effectiveness is awaited, and any recommendations from this review should be implemented to ensure it is fit for purpose in delivering this necessary transformation.

3. Worker Retention Strategies

Employee retention in the construction industry is low for various reasons. Employers must prioritise existing employees by offering competitive benefits, wellbeing policies, and attractive remuneration packages to prevent turnover. Becoming an “Employer of Choice” means creating a supportive work environment, offering benefits and culture that attract new talent while retaining experienced workers.

This strategy should be complemented by robust training programs for graduates, supported by educational institutions. Additionally, ongoing opportunities for upskilling and staff development should be part of the retention plan.

Typical Traits of an Employer of Choice are:

  • Competitive salaries and benefits
  • Positive, supportive culture
  • Pleasant work environment
  • Opportunities for training and development
  • Feedback-driven culture
  • Trust and transparency
  • Professional growth and capacity building
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What Educators, Trainers, and Employers Need from a Plan

To support skills development, the infrastructure, including Skills Centres, Technical Colleges, and universities offering construction-related courses, needs significant expansion and funding. The government has proposed progressive plans, including the creation of a new training body, Skills England, reforms to the training levy, and updates to apprenticeships.

Given the multi-year duration of degree courses and apprenticeships, implementing these reforms urgently is critical. The government’s plan should include consultations with construction industry bodies to identify priorities and quick wins to align the education sector with the industry’s needs.

The UK’s current construction labour shortages will worsen as approximately a quarter of the workforce plans to retire in the next decade. Therefore, a steady influx of trainees is essential, regardless of the large-scale homebuilding programme.

Employers, regardless of size, need confidence in long-term workloads in specific regions to justify investing in workforce expansion and training. A successful large-scale housing programme must include strategies for coordinated housing delivery across local authorities, ensuring a steady supply over time. Additionally, responsibility for delivery should be shared across the industry, not just the homebuilding sector, spanning SMEs, larger developers, builders, suppliers, and consultants. Skills training must address the entire industry, as residential developments will also require accompanying infrastructure.

So far the industry has reacted positively to last month’s government announcement of £600m overall for:

  • 10 new technical colleges and assistance for existing colleges to offer more construction courses
  • Support for skills boot camps, support for returner and upskilling
  • Support for partnerships between colleges and construction companies to increase industry experienced teachers
  • Support for the planned new Foundation Apprenticeships, further supported with funding from the planned Growth and Skills Levy .
  • Support for industry placements in coordination with the CITB
  • Support for Construction Skills Mission Board to promote employer collaboration

We will continue to look with interest to further announcements in this area.

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Blog Post

Grey belt: the underestimated game-changer for housing

A recent case in Bagshot in Surrey shows how the Labour Government’s new ‘grey belt’ rules, introduced in late 2024, will likely unlock hundreds of thousands of much-needed homes across the country.

The reform of Green Belt rules has proven to be an underestimated game-changer for housing development. In just a few months since its introduction, councils and inspectors across England have started approving projects on formerly restricted sites. Even councils that were historically opposed to development are now seeing new homes approved on grey belt land, in a transformative shift in the amount of land available for homes. But what is grey belt, how does it differ from regular Green Belt rules, and why could it have such a huge impact?

What is grey belt?

Grey belt land refers to parts of the Green Belt that are previously developed or that don’t strongly contribute to three of the Green Belt’s original purposes: to prevent the ‘unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas’, to stop ‘neighbouring towns from merging into one’, and to ‘preserve the setting and special character of historic towns’.

The original idea of ‘grey belt’ covered disused quarries, old industrial sites, scrubland – but we have moved far beyond that. Recognising that blanket Green Belt protections were imposing tight limits on greenfield development, the Government’s December 2024 update to the National Planning Policy Framework carved out this new ‘grey belt’ category​.

Crucially, developing grey belt sites is no longer automatically considered ‘inappropriate’ development under planning rules. This marks a huge shift: such proposals no longer need to prove ‘very special circumstances’ to justify building on Green Belt, and instead enjoy a presumption in favour of approval if certain criteria (like providing affordable housing) are met​. In short, the default for qualifying grey belt land has flipped from ‘no, you can’t build’ to ‘yes, you probably can’ – a seismic reversal of decades-old policy​. The core Green Belt protections remain for high-value landscapes and buffers, but this targeted reform frees up many other areas.

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When is a town not a town? When it’s a village

One of the first real-world tests came in Bagshot, Surrey, where a planning inspector approved 135 homes on Green Belt land after ruling that nearby settlements were villages, not towns, meaning the development wouldn’t breach the Green Belt’s purpose of preventing towns from merging. Under the old rules, such a scheme would likely have been refused outright. But under the Government’s new policies, land that fails to meet key Green Belt purposes – and offers public benefits like affordable housing – can now be approved without needing ‘very special circumstances’. That quiet shift is already delivering homes to meet the national need for 1.5 million homes.

Bagshot is no isolated case. Across the country, grey belt reform is already turning NIMBY ‘no-go’ sites into housing developments. Even local authorities long resistant to Green Belt release are coming around when a site is shown to meet the grey belt criteria. In St Albans – which hadn’t adopted a new local plan in decades – council members recently approved a 550-home scheme on land that officers identified as grey belt​. Basildon Borough Council likewise gave the nod to 250 homes on a grey belt site that wouldn’t have happened a year ago. Planning inspectors, too, are applying the new policy at a rapid clip: by February 2025, at least 86 appeal decisions had already cited ‘grey belt’ in their reasoning, and by March, that figure had grown to over 100​. From a large data centre outside London to new housing estates in the Home Counties, dozens of developments that once faced near-certain rejection are moving forward under these updated rules. This surge in planning activity suggests grey belt reform is quickly lowering barriers to development on underused land.

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Economic impact and housing potential

The expected impact of grey belt policy is backed by economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which factored the new planning reforms into its Spring 2025 outlook and concluded that housebuilding will reach levels not seen in 40 years​. 

The OBR projects that, by 2029/30, these reforms will enable roughly 170,000 additional homes to be built beyond what would have happened otherwise. In that year alone, housing supply is expected to be 30% higher than previously forecast, helping move the country closer to the Government’s goal of 1.5 million homes this parliament. Crucially, this isn’t just about hitting numbers – it will translate into stronger economic growth. By the end of the decade, the increased housing development is expected to make the UK’s GDP 0.2% larger, equivalent to about £6.8 billion in today’s money​. That gain could double to over 0.4% of GDP by the mid-2030s if momentum continues​. For a zero-cost policy change, it’s one of the most impactful growth boosts the OBR has ever scored. Getting more homes built thus isn’t just housing policy – it’s economic policy, with the potential to improve productivity and living standards by making housing more affordable where it’s needed most.

The Government’s ‘golden rules’ for green belt and grey belt building means that development brings more than just economic growth. Those rules require developers to include affordable housing, improve green space, and build new infrastructure such as GPs or schools. We are already seeing the benefits in areas that have failed the most to build new homes. St Albans has struggled to build enough homes for a growing population, but a scheme in Harpenden has recently passed because of the new reforms. The proposal is for 420 homes, half of which will be affordable housing tenures, 130 retirement homes and a £9.5 million contribution to local schools.   

What scale of housing will grey belt reform ultimately deliver? Early analyses suggest the numbers could be very substantial. One study estimates that roughly 300,000 new homes might be built on grey belt land across England in the coming years​ – effectively an entire year’s worth of housebuilding generated by reclassifying portions of Green Belt. Another estimated a potential capacity of 3.4 million homes! These figures are speculative, but they underscore the enormous potential of these sites. Grey belt policy is starting to deliver housing in some of the nation’s most constrained housing markets. 

It’s still early days, and local authorities and developers are feeling their way through the new rules. There will be plenty of litigation over what counts as grey belt, and the rules are sufficiently imprecise that someone will have to make a judgment on each site. 

But the initial results are clear. A policy that many assumed would be minor or symbolic is already making a real difference. The Government has proven that England can rapidly start to add tens of thousands of homes. This under-the-radar policy tweak will soon be having a major impact, which will be noticed across the country. The grey belt, once underestimated, is proving to be a game-changer for delivering new homes.

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Blog Post

Despite its hefty price tag, Carbon Capture and Storage is needed but why are we ignoring a ‘free’ equivalent?

There is a growing awareness that using more timber in construction would be good for the climate. Using wood substitutes for materials with much larger climate footprints i.e. concrete, steel, brick and block[1]. At the same time wood stores carbon that has been removed from the atmosphere via photosynthesis while the tree was growing in the forest. After the tree is harvested a new one is planted.

Technically this process is not Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) rather it is a Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR). However both processes are removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it: the former, theoretically, for centuries[2]; the latter for decades. In the battle to avert climate breakdown both are needed.

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Talk of CCS can elicit strong emotions. Its detractors, particularly amongst the green NGOs, point out that to date it has proved expensive and unreliable resulting in its development being slow. On the other hand its advocates, all big players – the UN, the Committee on Climate Change and the Labour Government – insist it is a key part of the architecture that will deliver net zero.

CCS’s UK champion, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, has secured nearly £22 billion of government funding to subsidise three projects on Teesside and Merseyside that will carry captured carbon to geological storage in Liverpool Bay and the North Sea resulting in the removal of 8.5 Mt CO2e each year from the atmosphere.

How does GGR via carbon stored in timber construction compare to CCS in the amount of carbon it can remove from the atmosphere? The answer comes from adding together four GGR categories delivered by using more wood in buildings.

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First, we have timber framed 2 or 3 storey family homes. Currently 92% of family homes built in Scotland have timber frames. England is now following, albeit from a low starting base of 9%. This change is happening for two main reasons: timber framed homes have a lower level of embodied carbon than a brick and block equivalent and they can be erected more quickly which financially benefits the housebuilder. The timber frame is also storing carbon at a rate of 4.6 tonnes per home. Consequently if 45% of the 300,000 family homes planned to be built each year had a timber frame this would store 0.6 Mt CO2e annually.

Second, we have carbon storing wood fibre insulation of which little is currently used in the UK unlike in Germany and Poland where figures are approaching 10% of new homes. If 20% of new homes in the UK used it this would store 0.2 Mt CO2e annually.

[Wood fibre insulation has the potential to be a major carbon store in both new and existing buildings – picture Steico]

Third, is mass timber which delivers much larger GGR figures. Mass timber is a bigger version of plywood where layers of wood are stuck together at right angles to produce a material which has the same structural strength of steel and concrete. With it we can construct big buildings – stations, mosques, offices, apartment blocks, schools. A recent study, by architects dRMM, focused on five case studies which concluded that each mass timber building stored on average 1,032 tonnes of carbon. If 300 cities and towns were to use mass timber to build 20 new buildings per year this would deliver removals of 6.2 Mt CO2e.

[Architects dRMM have studied five mass timber builds in the UK revealing them as major carbon stores as well as healthy buildings]

Fourth, if each of these mass timber buildings used wood fibre insulation we would have a GGR of 1.5 Mt CO2e per year.

In total this would deliver an annual carbon removal of 8.5 Mt CO2e – equivalent to the UK’s proposed CCS programme – and at no financial cost to the Treasury!

Sweden is leading the way with a steady increase in the number of mid-rise apartments built for timber – picture author

[Sweden is leading the way with a steady increase in the number of mid-rise apartments built for timber – picture author]

Quite why such a massive carbon removal opportunity remains essentially unrecognised by the government is a mystery. Is the technology not exciting enough? Is it because it cuts across three departmental silos (Housing, Energy and Environment) and isn’t seen as ‘belonging’ to any of them? Is it – oddly – because it doesn’t come with a significant price tag?

The government’s Timber in Construction Roadmap 2025 is its first step towards addressing the housing crisis in a sustainable way. While the government don’t need to finance GGR via more timber in buildings they do need to:

  1. Acknowledge publicly at cabinet level that timber buildings store carbon and that such GGRs are good for the climate.
  2. Use government procurement to boost timber construction as is in France and Japan.
  3. Include biogenic carbon in the embodied carbon assessment within net zero whole life carbon policy in the construction sector.

When it comes to Greenhouse Gas Removal technology now is the time to see the wood from the trees.

[1] This is because their manufacture involves high levels of heat, in most cases derived from a fossil fuel energy source.

[2] Off the coast of Norway two CCS operations at Sleipner and Snohvit have been capturing a million tonnes of CO2 annually for 27 years and 15 years respectively, so not yet centuries.

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10-year plan for housing Blog Post

Why this Labour government must learn lessons from Attlee as it embarks on its regeneration journey 

London, United Kingdom - Saturday 04 December 2021, Harca - Aberfeldy Festival of Lights.

2026 will see the 75th anniversary of 1951’s Festival of Britain.  A stone’s throw from Poplar HARCA offices, the Lansbury estate in Poplar, east London (named after former Labour leader George Lansbury) was featured in the Festival’s live architecture exhibition as an exemplar of post-war neighbourhoods.  A model for modern housing solutions that would improve the quality of life for residents, while addressing the acute housing shortages caused by World War II.   

The estate became a symbol of government-led urban renewal and the blueprint for many of the New Towns that followed under Clement Atlee’s mass housing programme. Atlee’s government oversaw the delivery of over 1million homes in 6 years.  As MP for neighbouring Limehouse, he would have well understood the relationship between housing and people’s life chances, and the potential for decent homes and places to improve these.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  The government’s ambitions to get Britain building today clearly aim to meet comparable challenges to those the country faced three quarters of a century ago. Their new housing plan offers remarkably similar solutions.  We face the twin challenges of a housing crisis and regional inequalities.  This government has a vital opportunity to address these issues through a long-term regeneration strategy that meets demand for new homes, empowers communities and fosters inclusive growth.  Places like Poplar present a unique opportunity for the government to apply the lessons learned from history to today’s setting.  

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Unlocking new homes in the capital

The proposed New Towns programme will go a long way to deliver places where land is available, but in already densely populated urban areas like London, unlocking estate regeneration must be an important component. Inequalities are not just regional, and much of London faces the same challenges as other areas. Better quality, mixed-tenure housing as part of rejuvenated urban neighbourhoods is a vital part of creating vibrant, sustainable communities where residents feel empowered, valued and able to thrive.  

Local, community driven estate regeneration

Poplar HARCA has been developing a successful model of community-driven, locally delivered estate regeneration since our inception in 1998.  Operating within a square mile, we manage more than 10,000 homes alongside community facilities, green spaces, workspaces and shops.  Nearly one third of our staff live locally and residents are active participants in shaping our services. The benefits of our local model were reflected recently in Poplar HARCA achieving the highest tenant satisfaction scores in London.   

We empower communities to stay, grow and thrive.  Regeneration here is not an imposed external process but one shaped and led by people who live here. It delivers on both housing needs and community health and well-being.  This approach unlocks sustainable regeneration that benefits everyone.   

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Lessons we’re learning

We’re learning lessons along the way, which could help this government’s thinking as it develops its turbocharged housing and regeneration programme.

Put residents at the heart of regeneration  

We create opportunity, enabling residents to stay, grow and thrive. Our generous landlord offer includes ‘one move’, avoiding disruption to people’s lives.  We shape places where long-standing and new residents contribute to their neighbourhoods – as civic leaders, business owners, in local jobs, as volunteers or in education.  Our St Paul’s Way scheme includes a new primary school, nursery, mosque. play facilities and a district heating approach.

Empower communities to shape regeneration

Our schemes are steered by communities.  Listening campaigns, co-design, resident steering groups and ballots, alongside day-to-day conversations, ensure that what we build reflects the needs and aspirations of those who live, work and study here.  For our plans on the Aberfeldy estate, 93% of residents voted in favour of regeneration and our approach gained national recognition.

Work in partnership to deliver infrastructure

Effective regeneration is about building strong, collaborative partnerships.  The value of our joint ventures with development partners, higher education institutions, community organisations, businesses, local and national government has delivered new housing, health services, education, youth services, workspace, faith centres, green spaces, transport connectivity, community facilities and employment services.    

Like Atlee’s government, we understand the inherent link between housing and life outcomes, so we take a holistic approach to regeneration, one that focuses on people having access to the services and amenities they need to live fulfilling lives.

Mixed communities thrive

Our model provides housing for genuinely mixed communities, offering a mix of social and private rent, shared ownership and private sale.  It includes retrofit of existing alongside new homes. This tenure-blind approach ensures that neighbourhoods are accessible to people from all walks of life, preventing the displacement of existing residents and fostering inclusive communities.

Build civic and business capacity

Successful regeneration builds capacity in local communities.  Initiatives such as fashion workspace Poplar Works and our Aberfeldy Street meanwhile programme demonstrate how regeneration can create new local business opportunities. In Teviot, our social value commitments has invested over £400,000 in the community, before the scheme has been considered for planning permission, fostering civic pride and community engagement.    

So, what is needed to unlock new housing through estate regeneration?  

Alongside community-driven regeneration the government could focus on new financial models and embed a commitment to community empowerment.

Successive governments have rightly provided funding to deliver affordable housing. But in tight economic conditions, the long-term sustainability of regeneration projects relies on attracting private investment, especially from institutional investors.   

Strong governmental policies that encourage institutional investors to back regeneration projects in high-demand areas are crucial.  Providing incentives for investment in affordable housing, community-led development projects and placeshaping efforts that prioritise the needs of residents while delivering financial returns for investors.     

The English Devolution White Paper sets out a commitment to empowerment for local government. This is now needed for housing.  The people who live in neighbourhoods should have a direct voice in shaping their places.  We know that when communities are at the heart of regeneration, the results are more sustainable, more equitable and more impactful in people’s lives.   

This government has, like Atlee’s, made delivering new homes at vast scale a cornerstone of its agenda. It must be bold, inclusive and driven by a clear vision of sustainable, community-focused growth.  By embracing a model of regeneration that is built on hyper-local delivery, community empowerment, institutional investment and a commitment to social infrastructure alongside new homes, this government will deliver 1.5million new homes it has promised to the nation.  

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10-year plan for housing Blog Post

Devolution will determine the success of the 10 year housing plan

For many years we’ve advocated for greater devolution – it was a key recommendation from the Commission for Housing in the North nearly ten years ago. In the North, we do not have a homogeneous housing market – there is much diversity, with pockets of deprivation sitting alongside areas of wealth, post-industrial towns, large urban areas, coastal communities and rural areas – including four of England’s national parks. One-size-fits-all solutions do not work for the North!

Devolution is now high up on the political agenda with the English Devolution White Paper, so there’s the opportunity to maximise the impact of investment in housing through more local control. The Government outlines its Devolution Framework as aiming to deliver ‘more houses, served by the necessary infrastructure, and more social housing’. It sets the ambition for mayors to become responsible for strategic planning and housing growth, so devolution and a ten year housing plan are intrinsically linked.

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This is all very welcome. The North has been leading the way with devolution, and we are already seeing benefits. It has hailed a new era of collaboration between housing associations and local authorities with the launch of Housing Partnerships across the North in areas with current or proposed Mayoral Combined Authorities. The NHC has been working closely with Housing Partnerships across the North and I’ve seen firsthand the difference they are making. Providers are no longer always competing for development sites or funding; they are working more collaboratively in the interests of their local area. They are delivering better value for money by working together on tenders. And they’re reaching out to other sectors with workstreams to address issues such as regeneration, development and placemaking, net zero, employment and health. These regional bodies bring together the experience and expertise of the partnership members and enable them to make a far greater impact than they would be able to alone.

Devolution featured strongly in our research reports Brownfield First and Warm Homes, Green Jobs. We identified that there was a joint challenge of centralised funding models acting as a barrier to delivering the change needed in communities. Both reports called for genuine acts of devolution, and a removal of the conditions, rules and requirements imposed on how Mayoral Combined Authorities deliver funding. Funding for brownfield land remediation and warm homes has now been included in integrated settlements for Greater Manchester and West Midlands Mayoral Combined Authorities, with this to be rolled out further soon. Giving more local control in these areas will increase the impact of funding, although to get maximum benefit, funding must be at the right level. £4.2 billion over ten years would remediate all the North’s brownfield land and unlock land for 320,000 homes, and £500m per year up to 2030 would bring the North’s social housing up to EPC band C. After 2030, £1 billion per year would enable providers to further decarbonise social housing and stimulate the green economy, creating thousands of jobs.

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Our recent state of the region report the Northern Housing Monitor really brought home to me that there is insufficient social housing in the North and that is driving homelessness and poverty. Our report found that there are nearly 500,000 households on social housing waiting lists in the North – a 13 per cent increase on the previous year.  The number of people forced to live in temporary accommodation is also rising fast with a yearly increase of around 16%, with over 14,000 children in the region living in temporary accommodation. The fact that 600,000 social rent homes in the North have been sold though Right to Buy and only 1 in 7 have been replaced contributes to increasing homelessness and people on the lowest income group being forced to rent in the private sector where rents are higher and quality is lower. The Monitor showed that a quarter of people renting privately in the North fall into the lowest income bracket and 1 in 3 children in the North live in households that are pushed into poverty after housing costs, so it’s critical we build the new homes the North needs.

We can do this in the North, but we need the right support, and the right flexibility in funding streams. The English Devolution White Paper signals that funding for affordable homes will also be devolved. We’ve called for more mayoral influence over affordable housing provision, as combined authorities have a unique oversight of social and economic needs in their area. However, given the urgent need for a new long term Affordable Homes Programme, a pragmatic approach is needed. Local control should be increased, but this must be balanced with utilising the depth of experience and expertise of Homes England, who have the resources and scale to support providers and combined authorities to maximise delivery.

In our response to the Treasury’s call for evidence for the Spending Review, we set out the support our members (housing associations, local authorities and combined authorities) need from government to bring maximum benefits to the communities they serve. One of the key areas of focus was the importance of regeneration in many Northern communities, to both improve existing neighbourhoods and unlock further supply.  The North is disproportionally affected with poor quality homes, with 27 per cent of homes in the private rented sector not meeting decent homes standards. While social housing fares much better in terms of quality, a recent survey with members suggested that over 126,000 social homes were situated in an area in need of regeneration.

To address this, we are calling for a dedicated funding stream of at least £1.37 billion over 5 years to support housing-led neighbourhood regeneration in the North. This would run alongside the recently announced Plan for Neighbourhoods, which supports social regeneration in specific towns.  The Devolution White Paper tentatively raises the prospect of a national level regeneration programme, and it would make sense for this to be devolved to combined authorities as they will have overall responsibility for housing in their area. However, devolution must run deeper than that. Our community engagement project Pride in Place found communities must be involved in shaping plans for their area, as regeneration schemes which do not involve residents are unlikely to be a success.

There should also be increased flexibility in the new Affordable Homes Programme to support housing-led regeneration schemes, so that outdated homes which are not fit for purpose can be replaced by new homes that meet the needs of communities. Members have reported it is difficult to get funding to replace smaller homes, such as bedsits, with larger family homes, even if there is need in the community. I hope more local flexibility will overcome this issue.

Devolution will be an integral part of the Government’s 10 year plan for housing – and at the NHC, we are confident it will be all the stronger for it.  

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10-year plan for housing Blog Post

Addressing the building safety crisis in the 10-year plan for housing

Let’s start with a simple statement of the problem. Around the country, between 9,000 and 12,000 medium or high rise buildings have fire safety problems with their external façade severe enough to pose a risk to life.

Of these, just 1,482 have completed works and just 5,025 have been formally identified. The identified buildings account for 273,000 individual homes, which means there are likely around 500,000 homes overall, which means something like 1.5m people sleep in blocks that might kill them in a fire.

Currently, we’re completing about 10 buildings a month which means that if we don’t speed up, we’ll finish the last building somewhere around 2100 (assuming the sea level rises don’t come for us first).

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And while we have some idea how to pay for these repairs (a messy combination of developers, taxpayers, freeholders and leaseholders), we don’t have anything approaching a financial strategy which matches the estimated £16.6bn price tag of the problem.

Our process of assessing buildings and working out what needs to be done is also deeply flawed, unregulated and currently the subject of predictable scandal.

This is a big problem, and demands a big strategy.

So far, the government has been unwilling to introduce big changes – sticking instead with the basics of the approach the preceding administration set in motion, albeit with some tweaks aimed to make it run faster.

This is not really good enough and represents (in my view) a classic embodiment of the sunken costs fallacy.

The building safety crisis is a complex and multifaceted one which evades a perfect or easy solution. But there are ways of approaching it which are less flawed and easier than the current mess.

The answer is to set up a system which offers three things the current one fails to: consistency, clear funding and control.

The current approach is inconsistent and unpredictable. The use of loose, bespoke guidance same building may be considered in need of remediation by one assessor, and cleared by another. The means of fixing the problem may also be different.

This causes an enormous amount of delay – because different parties fight over exactly what needs to be done to the building instead of just doing it.

A new approach would acknowledge a few simple facts. The first would be that we simply cannot fix every building. A combination of sloppy government guidance and industry malpractice means we have used combustible materials ubiquitously in the built environment for 40 years.

The government’s approach since the very early days of this crisis has been to say that building owners need to work out what to do based on professional assessment, instead of being told what to do by the state.

There is some logic behind this – all buildings are different and prescriptive rules can have messy, imperfect results.

But the reality is that the industry – with all its many conflicts of interest and incompetencies – has proved itself incapable of this task.

It is also true that while all buildings are different, most of them are also quite similar and what is a fire risk in Building A will also be a fire risk in Building B, C, D, E and F.

So we should have a basic, government-mandated system of scoring – with points added for factors like height, building occupancy, cladding material, extent of cladding, presence of combustible balconies and so on and taken off for sprinklers, fire alarms, second staircases and other features which reduce the risk. Score over a certain level, and you would need to bring the numbers down with the addition of risk mitigation – which may or may not involve full building regulation.

The next step is certainty of funding. Building remediation only really gets going when we have agreed how to pay for it. And the current bunfight over responsibility makes that very hard and very slow to define.

The answer is for Rachel Reeves to borrow the cash up front and over a long period of time.

But before someone screams the words “self-imposed fiscal rules” at their screen, she should also create a mechanism for getting it back – a long-term, statutory levy on companies across the various areas of the construction sector which have contributed to the mess.

Thanks to her tweaking of debt rules last autumn, this would actually give the government a pass to write the borrowing off.

And finally, control. In Victoria, Australia, a cladding taskforce has overseen and in some cases directly delivered the works to buildings. A regulator with powers to get a grip on the works, setting timescales and issuing fines for non-compliance, would force those who are delaying unreasonably to pull their fingers out.

Put all of these things together and you would have a system which focuses us on the most dangerous buildings, funds the work for them and gets it done. This does not need to be a process which drags on forever. But unless we take a new approach, it will be. 

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10-year plan for housing Blog Post

It’s time to move away from leasehold in older people’s housing

The Government swept to power with an overwhelming majority last summer and a mandate to deliver change. What better time is there to improve UK housing by reforming leasehold?

An important part of the housing sector in the context of the UK’s ageing population is specialist housing for older people. For example, Integrated Retirement Communities feature comprehensive service offerings such as restaurants, gyms and personal care (as distinct from age-restricted retirement housing with fewer amenities and services). Research from Homes England, published in 2024 and backed by HM Treasury, found that modern housing-with care schemes, such as Integrated Retirement Communities, deliver NHS savings of £1,840 per resident per year given their positive impact on resident health, as well as removing the factors that drive delayed discharges from hospital.

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But what is the right tenure of the future for Older People’s Housing? The independent Taskforce on Older People’s Housing’s, whose final report was published last autumn, recommended the UK look at new tenure models used overseas in order to drive growth in provision, affordability and innovation in the sector. Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook MP noted there is “rightly significant national interest in the Taskforce’s findings”.

Tenure reform in Older People’s Housing is needed not only because of the limitations of the current leasehold system, but because the UK is an outlier in its focus on property ownership in Older People’s Housing.

Indeed, the UK is highly unusual in using long leases (which are subsequently resold from one customer to the next) in modern, service-based housing-with-care schemes for older people.

Countries with more developed Integrated Retirement Community sectors have swapped a focus on property ‘ownership’ for a focus on those things that matter most to customers – affordability, cost certainty and consumer protection – all of which are delivered using contracts.

The experience of other countries, such as New Zealand, shows that a move to a bespoke tenure for the sector has massively helped the sector’s growth, as well as enhancing consumer confidence.

ARCO, the main body representing the Integrated Retirement Community (IRC) sector in the UK, has been looking into the viability of a contract model for the IRC sector in the UK since 2020, consulting with stakeholders from around the world, along with lawyers and investors. Our core conclusions to date are that the contract approach could work in the UK and could be used in both new and existing schemes as part of widespread reform to the leasehold system.

We are calling our proposal the ‘Retirement Occupancy Contract’ (ROC). Implementing such a model could be an important achievement of this Labour government.

Why? A key benefit of the model would be improved affordability and access to the sector for older people on average incomes, opening up this option to more households and ensuring that more older people have the option of living in an Integrated Retirement Community.

Implementing a contract approach can be included as part of the government’s leasehold reform agenda. Only minor amendments to primary legislation would be needed.

The leasehold system is commonly described as “archaic”, “feudal” and “outdated”. Although the Integrated Retirement Community sector in the UK has grown using Leasehold as the default tenure for private payers, the time is right to learn from best practice in other countries and provide the sector with a bespoke tenure model.

With a growing ageing population looking for housing that meets their changing needs, there has never been a better time to do away with the outdated leasehold system and create the tenure of the future.

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Letters to the editor

A Manifesto for Solving the UK Housing Crisis with Factory-Built
Housing

The UK faces a critical housing crisis characterised by unaffordable rents,
unattainable homeownership, and a house building sector that is too slow to deliver the 1.5 million homes that have been promised. This crisis damages communities and requires a bold, innovative solution. This proposal outlines a plan to revolutionise house building in the UK by embracing cutting-edge factory-built housing technology.

Vision:

The vision is a nation where everyone has access to a secure, affordable, and high-quality home. Factory-built housing is believed to be key to achieving this vision.

The Factory-Built Housing Solution:

Factory-built housing offers a proven approach with significant advantages:

  • Speed and Scale: Mirroring the efficiency of car manufacturing, factory-built homes can be produced rapidly and at scale. Existing factories, such as those in China with capacities of 10,000 sq metres of housing per day, per factory, demonstrate the potential to meet the UK’s housing needs. This proposal advocates for strategic partnerships to bring this capacity to bear on the UK housing shortage, delivering homes at an unprecedented pace.
  • Affordability: Streamlined factory production and rapid on-site assembly significantly reduce construction costs, translating to lower purchase prices and rents. Furthermore, the design of these homes prioritises ultra-low energy consumption, reducing ongoing running costs for residents.
  • Quality: Precision manufacturing ensures consistent, high-quality builds, often exceeding the standards of traditional construction. This proposal champions homes built to last, designed for modern living. Award-winning architectural designs, capable of on-site assembly in as little as 24 hours, illustrate the potential of this approach
  • Sustainability: Factory-built homes are inherently designed with sustainability in mind. The use of eco-friendly materials and the integration of energy-efficient technologies contribute significantly to achieving the UK’s environmental targets.
  • Flexibility: Modular designs offer unparalleled flexibility. Homes can be easily reconfigured or even disassembled and reused, adapting to evolving needs and minimising waste.

Action Plan:

To realise this vision, this proposal recommends the following key actions:

  • Investment in Factory-Built Housing Infrastructure: This proposal calls for strategic investment in developing UK-based factory capacity and streamlining planning processes to facilitate the rapid deployment of factory-built homes.
  • Partnerships with International Leaders: Collaboration with established factory-built housing providers is crucial to leverage existing expertise and capacity, ensuring a swift and effective response to the housing crisis.
  • Prioritisation of Quality and Design: This proposal champions innovative, award-winning designs that create vibrant and sustainable communities.
  • Ensuring Affordability: Implementation of measures to ensure that cost savings achieved through factory-built housing are passed on to residents, making homeownership and affordable renting a reality for all, is a core component of this plan.

Conclusion:

Factory-built housing represents not just a solution to the housing crisis, but an opportunity to build a better future. This proposal offers a pathway to a future where everyone has a safe, affordable, and sustainable place to call home.

By Eamonn Gabriel

Time to plan for the Budget in Autumn 2025

The dust is starting to settle on the 2024 Budget and if it’s possible to generalise across the spectrum of reactions, it’s probably “a good start but not enough to address even the most acute problems of poverty and inequality – there is still a long way to go”.

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There were welcome steps towards addressing wealth inequality with the changes to Capital Gains Tax and Inheritance tax, ending Non-Doms Status, VAT on private schools and increasing the tax on private jet travellers. We now need to call for all unearned wealth to be taxed at the same rate as earned income. We should also open a debate on how best to replace the regressive Council Tax with a fairer system.

The two main contenders are a Proportional Property Tax (PPT) and a Land Value Tax (LVT). Some favour PPT e.g. the IPPR and Fairer Share, while others such as Martin Wolf, Chief Economist at the Financial Times and the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham spell out the merits of LVT.

Importantly, the liability for payment of both these taxes lies with the owner not the tenant.

Labour Housing Group is well placed to promote this debate, raise awareness of the unfairness of Council Tax, and encourage the Government to initiate a public consultation in advance of the Budget in 2025.

Jacky Peacock, OBE, is the Chair of Advice for Renters and writes in a personal capacity.

Building the affordable homes we need

Dear Red Brick editors and readers,

I am not going to spend any time in this letter on why we desperately need more affordable homes. We are all aware of the statistics on housing waiting lists, levels of homelessness, children sharing beds with siblings, and the impact of housing costs within the cost-of-living crisis. That is why Labour’s manifesto was clear, “Labour will deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation”. So the simple question is how?

First, the Government needs to confirm a long term, 10-year, rent settlement for Registered Providers (social and affordable housing landlords).  Only then can they plan and borrow for investment. The immediate increase in borrowing capacity will free Registered Providers to bid on the heavily subsidised affordable housing provided by private developers through their s.106 planning obligations. At present, this is not happening. This limits not only the delivery of affordable housing, but that of private housing as well.  This is an urgent issue and needs to be resolved now.

Second, as the Government is proposing, it needs to urgently reform the planning system to ensure that all local authorities in the country have a plan to deliver the homes they need. By 2025, 78% of Local Authorities in England will not have an up-to-date Local Plan, and 38% will have a Plan that is 10 years old or more.  What does this mean for affordable housing delivery? A few extreme illustrations of authorities with high percentages of green belt and their record of affordable home building might help. York has not had a Local Plan since 1954 and built a total of 3,329 homes in the 5 years to 31 March 2022. However, after accounting for Right to Buy loses, only a net 9% of those homes were ‘affordable’. Brentwood, over the same period, delivered a total of 1,394 new homes of which a net 8% were affordable. There are more examples that could be given, but let us be clear that in these areas, and many more, local authorities are not meeting their total housing requirements and certainly are not delivering the affordable homes we so desperately need.

Third, within the planning reforms, government needs to over-emphasise the importance of affordable housing delivery while ensuring that planning authorities bring forward the right mix of sites. We all agree that brownfield sites should be considered as a priority for development, but in many locations outside of London, the costs — such as for remediation, and construction — of developing brownfield sites means that they do not deliver the expected and necessary levels of affordable housing. Take Birmingham, in that 5-year period I referred to above, a total of 17,800 new homes were built. Yet after Right to Buy Registered Providers lost a net 994 affordable homes from their stock. You need to ensure that there are enough sites, effectively green field (not to be confused with Green Belt, but perhaps those as well, certainly Grey Belt!), being developed that can deliver the targeted level of affordable housing. There need to be checks and balances to ensure that local authorities are doing this.

Fourth, social rent needs greater emphasis among affordable housing requirements. Definitions and emphasis changed under the previous Conservative administration. In 2012, they changed the emphasis in grant funding and financial policy away from social rent (those homes with rents set at around 50% of market rents) to affordable rent (around 80% of market rent) in an austerity measure to lessen funding of affordable housing. While affordable rent might address part of the need for affordable housing, it should only be viewed as a piece of a larger jigsaw. We need to bring back social rent within the delivery mix.  This change has been further accentuated by Right to Buy losses as I have illustrated above. There needs to be greater flexibility in what defines affordable housing, but one thing is surely clear, that social rent should begin to once again play a greater part in delivery in many areas.  When I started in development over 20 years ago, the starting point was that social rent formed a large percentage of the affordable housing s.106 obligation on sites. We need to return to a point where planning policy sets a minimum percentage of social rent within the affordable mix. We should also be willing to accept other forms of affordable housing such as discounted market sales or rent to buy. The need is not uniform across the country, just as development viabilities are not, so there needs to be greater flexibility as to what is accepted.

Finally, I would like to challenge the Treasury. Affordable housing delivery should be considered as an investment in national infrastructure. We spend £31bn annually on housing benefit. Surely, a logical case can be made to commence a programme of government-led investment in affordable housing without viewing it as current account expenditure of the nation. We will have an asset, we may eventually reduce our housing benefit bill, it will lead to benefits for the wider economy – health outcomes, educational outcomes, social and labour market mobility – it would aid economic growth, improving fairness and creating opportunity.    

With Labour’s attention on immediate planning reform, its focus on economic growth and delivering more homes of all tenures, and with a willing development industry ready to deliver, bridging the gap in affordable housing delivery is achievable.

Paul Brocklehurst is Chair of the Land, Planning and Development Federation

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10-year plan for housing Blog Post

A ten-year plan for community-led housing

Image of London CLT member at project being built in Sydenham, south London.

Dr Tom Archer argued here in May last year that we need a more diverse and competitive housebuilding industry, including more community-led housing, if the government is to hit its housing targets. The 10-year plan must make diversification a key objective.

Labour ministers have repeatedly called for a great diversity in the housebuilding industry since coming to office in July. They join a long line of ministers saying this, going back well over a decade, with the previous government even declaring the housing market broken in a white paper in 2017. But the market has only become more concentrated and broken over that period. Labour’s long-term housing strategy needs to move beyond rhetoric to reforms that get to the root of the problem.

One aspect of market diversity missing from the UK is self-commissioned homes – those built or commissioned by individuals, families or community groups. The Bacon Review noted in 2021 that these approaches account for around 4 in 10 new homes internationally, but fewer than 1 in 10 in the UK. Community projects are even more acutely underrepresented within this market sector – a mainstream approach to social housing provision in many European countries, it accounts for just 170,000 homes in the UK, or 0.7% of the housing stock.

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Why so small?

As the Bacon Review put it, ‘our housing delivery system has become increasingly hard-wired in favour of one particular model of limited appeal’.

Part of the answer is cultural. Our housing system is built around paternalism and speculation. Increasingly large top-down organisations build homes for people in need, who are assumed to be incapable of playing any meaningful part in decision-making, and for consumers who will buy the same lowest-common-denominator pattern book product. You rarely hear mention of co-operative approaches. Policymakers and industry professionals tend to assume – against the evidence – that ‘self build’ means Grand Designs and ‘community’ means scrappy, slow and expensive. But look internationally and they are completely normal, integrated into the way that market, affordable, and social housing is built and managed.

At a time when public trust in institutions is so low, is it wise for those institutions and the government to write the public off as incapable blockers? Polling by Grosvenor found that just 2% of the public trust developers and 7% trust local planning authorities to make the right decisions for their neighbourhoods. Doubling down on the same broken system is a surefire way to stoke populism.

With a record number of Co-operative Party MPs in Parliament, and in key ministerial posts, there is a real opportunity to challenge this culture and to change the system, to adopt cooperative models that build trust and pride and cohesive communities, as well as housing units.

I have been working with counterparts in the UK Cohousing Network and the Confederation of Co-operative Housing, and a wider network of communities and professionals, to feed into the ministry’s work on its long-term housing plan.

We have a long shopping list of ideas connected to the current Government’s policy programme. Some have excited activists, such as implementing a Community Right to Buy that encompasses housing and regeneration.

But at the heart of our proposals is something more akin to an industrial strategy.

If you look at housing coops in Switzerland or cohousing in Denmark you mostly do not see plucky groups of people banding together to become amateur developers, using complex community rights to build on marginal sites. You see a mature market of cooperative developers and enablers working in partnership with the public and private sector. Sometimes they start with a site and build the community around the new homes. Sometimes communities commission their homes from suppliers that come with all the required skills, access to finance and industry relationships to codesign and build them.

We had some of this when the government last supported housing coops in the 1970s and tenant management organisations in the 1990s. There is a small marketplace of these enablers and developers today. But they have struggled with constant policy churn and tokenistic support, while billions were ploughed into volume housebuilders and the largest housing associations via grant funding and Help to Buy schemes.

Our discussions with the government are inspired by the approach set out in its emerging industrial strategy.

The government needs to engage in a sustained collaboration with the community sector, providing a clear direction for growth with less policy churn and stable policy decisions. This means fixing the planning system so that it is less expensive, slow and risky for SMEs, without watering down standards. It means redesigning grant and investment funds in Homes England and the Greater London Authority so they improve access to suitable and affordable finance, including flexible grants for social and affordable housing. It means using opportunities like new towns and public land to create opportunities for community-led housing.

The government also needs to catalyse activity that otherwise would not happen, and build institutional capacity and structures. This means investing in our growth lab to support the development of more co-operative developers and enablers, and using tools like financial guarantees to bring private capital into a fledgling market. It means incentivising or requiring the large housing associations to partner with and support community-led projects as a condition of funding, extending successful partnership models that are currently very concentrated in the rural South West.

The 10-year housing strategy also needs to recognise that the problems, and the barriers to the solutions, are very different in Cornwall, Bristol, Liverpool and Cambridgeshire. Community-led housing has often struggled when developing locally-appropriate solutions that fall foul of Homes England funding rules, or Treasury metrics on value for money. Policy needs to follow local needs, not the other way around.

A ten-year industrial strategy could transform the agency and power of communities in England. It could give real hope to millions that they can meaningfully shape and control house building and management. Make them builders not blockers, partners not consultees, actively engaged in our national renewal.

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Why we urgently need to start climate proofing our homes

Secret Garden, Climate Innovation District, Leeds by shuunyanet is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In its landmark 2019 report on the future of UK housing, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) pulled no punches on its assessment of the climate resilience of our homes.

“UK homes are not fit for the future”, the statutory advisory body stated bluntly, observing that the UK’s 29 million existing homes needed to be made low-carbon, low-energy, and resilient to a changing climate.

In the half decade or so that has followed, we have made some progress towards the ‘low-carbon’ and ‘low-energy’ spokes of this wheel. However, our existing homes are little more resilient to a changing climate now than they were in 2019.

Meanwhile, our planet continues to warm unceasingly. While climate projections carry an inherent degree of uncertainty, the target of limiting warming to 1.5°C, as per the Paris Agreement, is slipping from reach. According to the UN Environment Programme, there remains a large possibility that eventual global warming will exceed 2°C or even 3°C, a possibility that some scientists now believe to be inevitable.

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The implications of these scenarios for UK homes are simultaneously urgent and underappreciated. Already, up to four fifths of UK households report their homes overheating in hot weather, an increase from just one fifth in 2011. Around 6.3 million UK homes are at risk of flooding, a number that will rise to eight million in 2050 on current climate trajectories.

Wind and driven rain will also increasingly affect homes across the western and southern coastlines of the UK, making them more vulnerable to rapid heat loss and serious fabric problems. At the sharp end of the different warming scenarios, the extreme climate events we currently think of as rare will gradually, yet inexorably, become the norm.

Although the impact of these events on the structure of our homes, buildings and wider infrastructure is great, the economic and health reverberations are also worth considering. Around one third of people who experience a flood event develop depression, anxiety, and/or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The evidence is also conclusive that overheating exacerbates risks to health and wellbeing, especially when indoor temperatures exceed 25°C. If temperatures continue to rise, overheating in buildings could, according to the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers, cause 4,500 premature deaths per year by 2050.

The economic cost of climate events is larger still. Just two months ago, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries – not famed for their alarmism, being risk specialists – estimated that more than ten per cent of global GDP could be lost if 1.5°C of warming is exceeded.

To an extent, we are seeing these impacts already; observe for example the groundbreaking London Climate Resilience Review, which documented how the 2022 heatwave melted roads and caused hospital IT infrastructures to fail in the capital, delaying operations and bringing the city to a partial standstill.

In this future world, a world that is increasingly intruding into the present, our homes have a central role to play. As the Labour MP Torsten Bell writes, there is hardly any corner of our lives not profoundly shaped by our homes, not least our physical, mental, and financial health.

Our collective ability to make our homes more resilient to a changing climate – to install shutters to block out extreme heat, or reinforced doors to prevent the entry of swollen floodwaters – will at least partly determine the extent to which a warming world impacts our health, the economy, and our prosperity.

In other words, it is time to take the CCC’s 2019 assessment of the future of UK housing seriously, all of it, and get on with the urgent task of climate proofing our homes.

Given the level of warming we are likely headed for, we must place this task on an even footing with the installation of low-carbon heating and energy efficiency measures. Retrofit programmes that do not include provision for climate adaptation and resilience measures are essentially flawed, missing an opportunity to climate proof our homes – and the people who live in them – in one fell swoop.

How might we do this? In a chapter published in the forthcoming UK Housing Review and an accompanying paper released with the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence, we have sketched out a way forward.

Our proposal is to incorporate climate resilience into an updated Decent Homes Standard (DHS), potentially via the creation of a ‘Criterion E’. This new criterion would stipulate that a home cannot be defined as decent unless a) it has a ‘climate resilience audit’ carried out, and b) it has been subsequently upgraded with all recommended measures to meet a reasonable definition of being climate resilient.

Linking this new DHS to a suitable funding stream – perhaps provided through a new Decent Homes Programme that consolidates and simplifies existing funding streams for retrofit, building safety, and housing quality – would enable us to the rise to the challenge of climate proofing our homes. Of course, the cost of this programme would be large, but the cost of doing nothing to our health, the economy, and the planet potentially far greater.