Tag: Devolution

Categories
Blog Post

Spatial Development Strategies are a critical part of the Government’s planning reforms – but why?

A key part of the Government’s growth mission is reform of the planning system. Two years since the Labour Party set this out in the Manifesto, we now have a major new Planning and Infrastructure Act and a complete rewrite of the National Planning Policy Framework, heralding a new approach to plan-making and a standardised approach to decision-making policies.

A System Without Plans

Over the last 15 years we have had a plan-led system in name only.  We currently have less than 25% up to date local plans in England, with no certainty for developers and investors around where development should be located, or for local communities around how their areas will change over time.  To fix the system the Government is bringing back a two-tier approach to plan-making with the introduction of Spatial Development Strategies (SDS), which will sit above local plans.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

When Minister Matthew Pennycook introduced the new system of SDS last year, he made it clear that these must not be ‘big local plans’ and had to act as ‘spatial investment frameworks’.  Framing these in a positive light, being enablers of good growth and not restrictive planning documents, is a necessary part of their implementation – but what does this mean in practice?

A Framework for Growth

Over the last 15 years, since the abolition of regional spatial strategies, all the political, financial and technical risk in planning decisions has been at the local authority level. Bringing back a two-tier plan-making system and separate governance arrangements for SDS will hopefully help fix this.  Most of the heavy lifting will now be done through the SDS system. They will have to provide a long term framework for growth, setting out a spatial strategy for transforming places over a 20 to 30 year period and an investable pipeline of infrastructure. They will have to provide a spatial articulation of local growth plans and their economic priorities, allocate housing targets to each local planning authority, identify where Green Belt reviews are needed through local plans, prioritise strategic infrastructure and determine where strategic growth areas should be, which may include new towns in some areas.

Unlocking Investment

Vitally, the new strategic planning system will have to help rebuild investor confidence if we are going to deliver the infrastructure we need to support growth and the right type of housing we need to solve the housing crisis. We can no longer rely on the public sector to foot the bill and developer contributions will only go so far.  We need a different investment model and that means different investors. Institutional investors have made it clear that they are willing partners in this, but they want the new system to be up and running, providing more stable conditions for them to support the delivery of development and infrastructure.

We are seeing this start to play out in areas with Mayoral Authorities and with the support of Homes England Strategic Place Partnerships. Sites that have been unviable for years are now becoming a realistic possibility. Alongside the new funding regime, we also now have the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act which brings with it significant new planning tools to support delivery of the priorities set out in SDS. For the first time in years, we will have strategic plans where there is a direct relationship between those preparing the plan and those delivering them, as a result of a much greater role in planning for Mayors. This can only be a positive boost for investor confidence in these areas.

Not all places will benefit equally, however. The more mature the devolved arrangements are, the more the Strategic Planning Authority will be able to directly influence delivery.  Those areas that already have Mayoral Authorities are off and running in the race to be the first to get their SDS in place. All going well, within the next 2-3 years we will see the first SDS adopted and very soon after that, the place transformation will begin. 

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Would you like to write for Red Brick? Email rose.grayston@gmail.com to pitch your piece (c.600-900 words)

Categories
Blog Post

Housing-led regeneration has untapped potential to tackle the housing crisis and to build a thriving North

Housing-led regeneration can unlock at least 500,000 good quality homes across the North of England and this is an opportunity that cannot be missed by Government.

As part of our Renew inquiry into housing-led regeneration for northern growth, supported by Homes for the North and Muse, we issued a Call for Evidence. The response was fantastic: we received submissions from organisations responsible for around 1 million of the North’s 1.4 million social homes, including insights from more than 160 regeneration schemes.

The message was clear – housing-led regeneration is essential to increase the supply of new homes, attract private investment, and boost economic growth in the North. It helps create great places to live; improves housing quality and residents’ health and wellbeing; generates jobs and skills opportunities; and promotes sustainability by providing greener, more energy-efficient homes that lower household bills.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Housing-led regeneration in the North is not one single activity. It encompasses a wide range of interventions, from refurbishing individual homes to transforming neighbourhoods, reclaiming derelict land, and redeveloping urban centres. While these interventions differ in scale and approach, they share a common logic: that investment in homes and places can act as a catalyst for wider social and economic renewal. The scale of the opportunity is striking. Already, there are 100,000 homes planned in major city centre regeneration schemes, and our policy proposals aim to accelerate their delivery. Most of these homes are set to be built in our larger cities, so more support is needed to extend this to smaller towns and declining high streets to make sure no-one and nowhere is left behind.

A further 320,000 homes could be built on brownfield land; sites that are often derelict or underused but rich with potential to attract more investment and drive local growth.

Added to that, there are around 100,000 social homes which will be in need of regeneration over the next ten years. These homes tend to be concentrated in areas of deprivation and include older, colder terraced housing and tower blocks no longer fit for purpose. They do not meet the needs of residents, and weigh heavily on social housing providers’ balance sheets, preventing investment in new homes. For providers to play the fullest role in the delivery of new homes, and to prevent loss of social housing, ageing homes that require continual repair and investment must be renewed.

Despite its huge potential, a stubborn set of structural barriers continue to hold back housing-led regeneration in the North. Lower land values in many northern areas mean that developments are often less financially viable than in the South. At the same time, the high cost of remediating brownfield land, often contaminated or complex to develop, creates a funding gap that many projects cannot bridge without Government support.

The challenge is compounded for social housing providers. In the North, rental incomes tend to be lower, yet the costs of construction and refurbishment remain comparable to other regions. This creates a stark trade-off: invest in upgrading existing homes or inbuilding new ones.

The Renew inquiry’s recommendations set out how the Government can act to address these challenges and kickstart growth and opportunities in the North. Building on the very welcome £39bn, decade-long Social and Affordable Homes Programme for new build social homes, a £500 million per year, decade-long Place Based Regeneration Fund would provide the certainty and continuity needed to address ageing homes in need of replacement or refurbishment. Extending the National Housing Delivery Fund to a similar timeframe would unlock the most complex sites and help address the high upfront costs that currently deter development. Meanwhile, appointing a dedicated Minister for Regeneration could ensure cross-government coordination.

Equally important is building local capacity and trust. Establishing a National Centre for Regeneration in the North would help rebuild expertise, share best practice, and drive innovation. And placing residents at the heart of regeneration, through clear standards and rights, can ensure that development is done with communities, not to them.

The timing is critical. With increased devolution giving northern leaders greater control over housing, transport, and skills, there is a real opportunity to align policy and delivery in ways that were not possible before. Combined with significant government focus and investment in housing, the conditions are right to make a real difference.

Now is the time to put the final pieces of the jigsaw in place to tackle the housing crisis, build thriving places and healthier homes, and deliver northern growth. At the launch event for the Renew inquiry report in Parliament on Wednesday there was a real buzz in the room – I feel confident we can work together to deliver for the North, so that no-one and nowhere is left behind.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Would you like to write for Red Brick? Email rose.grayston@gmail.com to pitch your piece (c.600-900 words)

Categories
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.

subscribe to red brick’s free newsletter

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.

Want to volunteer with red brick? Fill out our Expression of interest form here

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.  

Categories
Blog Post

Labour’s Plans to Increase Home Ownership & Abolish the Leasehold System

The Labour Party will gather shortly at Liverpool to discuss the National Policy Forum’s report which is likely to form the basis of the manifesto for the next General Election.

Labour is seeking the support of aspirant home owners with proposals to guarantee the deposit of those who can obtain a mortgage. The party is concerned that the number of home owners is falling especially among young people.

The Leadership wants to see the proportion of all households who are home-owners reach 70%. The current rate is 65%. The last time it was 70% was in 2003. This target is therefore ambitious given the decline in wages and is dependent on a growing economy.

Labour will retain the Right to Buy for council tenants, though the discount rate will be reviewed. Council leaders will argue that this policy will not help their efforts to reduce the record numbers of homeless households in temporary accommodation.

Labour supports leasehold reform

The report sets out helpful polices to attract the support of the 4.86 million leaseholders who live in England and Wales. Scotland abolished their leasehold system in 2004.  Many leaseholders live in marginal constituencies.

Leaseholders do not own any bricks and mortar in their homes. They own the right to live in their property for a limited period. Once their lease runs out, they will become mere tenants if they do nothing. Service charges disputes are commonplace. Freeholders can recover their legal costs from leaseholders even if they lose at court. Virtually all the former UK colonies no longer have a leasehold system.

In 2002 Labour introduced the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act. This was designed to replace the leasehold system with commonhold. It failed due to opposition from many vested interests. 

There are only a handful of commonhold sites in England and Wales. Commonhold is not just for flats. It also applies to interdependent buildings with shared facilities and common parts. On the Isle of Shepey in Kent, the owner of a mobile home site gave the land via a commonhold company to the site residents who now manage the site themselves.

The Law Commission’s proposals to replace the feudal leasehold system with the modern commonhold tenure will be implemented in full at minimal cost to public funds. Commonhold will become the default tenure for flats.  Such proposals are very timely as the Government has decided to drop their own plans in this area. The Conservatives will deny that this is linked to nearly 40 % of their donations coming from developers.

Fire Safety

All leaseholders will be protected from the costs of remediating fire safety defects for cladding and non-cladding defects. All dangerous buildings will be identified, registered, and made safe. In September 2021 there were over 1000 unsafe buildings in London alone. The current government still does not know how many blocks are unsafe. The rate of remediation is painfully slow and there are non-qualifying leaseholders who are ineligible for help  under the 2022 Building Safety Act. Such proposals are welcome.  

The report refers to the rate of remediation being accelerated. However, there is no mention of who will pay for such work or how it will be carried out. This area needs to be sharpened up though the financial implications are challenging. 

Flat sales are falling due to the complexities around the Building Safety Act. Some conveyancers  will not act for leaseholders who are forced to sell at a loss at auctions. 

Further work needed

There are other problematic issues for home owners that need addressing. Shared ownership needs to be reformed. How can this be considered as a form of ownership when such residents can be evicted for two months’ worth of rent arrears and lose all any equity that they have built up?  There is currently a Commons Select Committee inquiry into shared ownership. It is likely to be critical.

The estate charges that house owners pay on unadopted private estates to volume builders are controversial. Home owners can lose their homes if they ignore such charges. These are known as fleecehold. The former Labour MP for Bishop Auckland Helen Goodman produced an excellent 10-minute rule Bill in 2017 (see her YouTube video here).  Her Bill is outside the scope of the Law Commission’s work though the  Competition and Market Authority are in the process of investigating such charges.  

The situation for the owners of mobile homes is crying out for reform. They own the property but not the land it sits on. They have to pay 10% commission to the site owner if they wish to sell.

Attitude of Party members

Labour outside Westminster appears at times to have a cultural problem with owner occupied housing. Although leasehold reform has been in nearly all Labour election manifestos since the war, this issue has seldom been discussed at Labour conference. None of the progressive think tanks have produced reports on leasehold reform, though see this report by the Welsh Government. 

One of the reasons for the failure of the 2002 Act was the lack of support outside Parliament. Unfortunately, the work of the leasehold reformers such as the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, the National Leasehold Campaign and Commonhold Now are seldom discussed in Labour circles.

Devolution

Labour will introduce a Take Back Control Act. This will devolve power away from London. It is not clear what the implications are for housing. The NPF envisage that new development corporation will lead in partnership with developers and local councils in the drive for building new homes. Will Sadiq Khan be empowered to require developers to introduce a commonhold scheme as envisaged in previous manifesto? Will “fleecehold residents “be able to require local councils to adopt communal facilities on their estates? 

The NPF report is strong on the need to build more homes. Potential home owners will be attracted to the Labour Party by the thought of a guaranteed deposit. However, doubts remain whether young people can obtain a mortgage when the average property in London costs over £600,000.  Reinvigorating commonhold will attract political support. The Labour leadership needs to provide support to Labour parliamentary candidates on how to campaign on leasehold reform.

Dermot Mckibbin is on the Executive Committee of Labour Housing Group, and will shortly become a member of the new Beckenham & Penge CLP