In 1952 the winning goal in the FA Cup Final was scored by a Chilean, George Robledo. Newcastle United beat Arsenal 1-0.
There’s a bit of a fuss on this weekend. But 60 years ago, when Queen Liz II was ascending the throne, not only did Newcastle win the cup but my family was busy moving into a new council house in Newcastle. It was a ‘Bevan House’, built to the standards demanded by Aneurin Bevan when he was Minister of Health (and Housing) in the Attlee Government. Space and amenity standards were excellent and the estate was a great place to grow up. (For those that know the city, it was near the Kenton Bar – which has just been demolished – on the fringes of Cowgate.) The average council rent in 1952 was 18s per week – equivalent to around £25 today.
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On more occasions than I can count, we have advocated on Red Brick (for example here and here and here) that the most effective way of boosting growth in the economy is to get some money, public or private, into housing construction.
We have also commented on the extraordinary process of quantitative easing (QE) and how hundreds of billions of pounds have been flushed into the economy without any clear idea of where the money will end up and what benefit it would bring in terms of lending in the productive economy.
After a few days away from blogging on the North Cornwall coast (not, I hasten to add, to follow the Olympic torch) I had some catching up to do with my reading. So I was struck by the confluence of four different bits of information from the last week.
First, our esteemed Housing Minister Grant Shapps said something that I agreed with! He pointed out that, with 245,000 additional households being formed each year, we will continue to build well below the number of homes that are needed. He should of course have gone on to say that his policies mean that the number of starts is falling and he is making things much worse.
You would have thought that Patrick Wintour on the Guardian was experienced enough to realise that a briefing from Grant Shapps and No 10 is a poor source for a major story. But the Guardian today splashes the tale that David Cameron is backing Shapps’ plan ‘to abolish housing rent subsidy for higher earners living in social housing’.
Wintour falls into several of Shapps’ well-rehearsed traps.
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Knowles is sweeter than Sugar
Two hours last night in front of the telly, and there couldn’t have been a bigger contrast between the two programmes I watched.
I have praised Nick Knowles’ ‘SOS DIY The Big Build’ before, but last night’s story was as stunning as any.
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]