8 INDUSTRY NEWS
Election reaction: social housing
Patrick Mooney, editor of Housing Management & Maintenance, looks at how the general election is likely to affect the social housing sector.
A period of uncertainty is the inevitable outcome of the general election, with parts of the Housing & Planning Act 2016 still to be enacted and question marks over the future of many policies outlined in the recent Housing White Paper. It appears the Homelessness Reduction
Bill just managed to get Royal Assent before Parliament closed for the election campaign and while this is good news for the homeless, it will require councils to provide far more support…at considerable cost. The Government has offered some financial support but inevitably it will not cover all of the costs, particularly in London. Nuts and bolts of the private rented
sector’s regulation have yet to be imple- mented, with planned consultation exercises now put on hold. For once this pause for breadth might work in the policy- makers’ favour, if it allows work on the Rugg Review (Part Two) to inform the process and produces better and more effective legislation. However, Labour have come out boldly
saying they will strengthen regulation of private rented housing by bringing in legal minimum standards, mandatory licensing and increasing the fines on rogue landlords to £100,000. Jeremy Corbyn has also promised to build one million new homes, with half of them built by councils. Gavin Barwell has rubbished both policies saying the first would drive up rents, while the second is undeliverable. Instead he says the focus should be on implementing the White Paper. The uncertainty might be welcomed if it
allows the incoming Government to have a serious rethink over extending the Right to Buy to housing association tenants, halting the enforced sale of council assets or for cancelling further welfare benefit cuts which affect the weakest and most vulnera- ble members of society.With deregulation of HAs creeping in ahead of Parliament
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being dissolved, a number of social landlords are already selling much needed affordable homes as part of stock rationali- sation strategies. This appears to be the new game on the block, edging ahead of merger mania and is likely to increase as HAs focus on building new homes. Social housing leaders have been vocifer-
ous in attacking the Conservatives’ policies to cut local housing allowances and funding for supported housing. But many of them have been impressed by the approach taken by Gavin Barwell, who many want to see returned as the Housing Minister if Theresa May is returned as Prime Minister after the June election.
tives,” warning that it is not yet clear what impact Brexit will have on the market. Despite early indications of an immediate slowdown after the referendum result however, more recent evidence points to modest increases in numbers of sales being agreed in England. In the report, the NAO brought attention
to the private housebuilding markets domination by around 10 large firms, reportedly accounting for nearly two-thirds of private homes. According the report, The Home Builders Federation agreed that such firms “limit the rate at which they build to what they believe the market can absorb.” To aid evidence-based consideration of
NAO looks at state of sector
The National Audit Office (NAO) has published an overview of the housing market in England, detailing the Department for Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG) housing strategy and the overall housing policy landscape. Two of the DCLG’s current four strategic
objectives are focused on housing: increas- ing home ownership and increasing the supply of homes, with the ambition of delivering a million new homes in England by 2020. According to the NAO, housebuilding
has “fallen short of demand for many years,” especially in London. Projections suggest there will be at least 227,000 new households formed each year between 2011 and 2021. This is substantially higher than the annual average of 166,000 extra homes in England over the last 10 years. Delivery of the Government’s million new homes target by 2020 will require 174,000 net additions a year. The report expressed “concern over the
lack of urgency and ambition in view of the rising costs, both human and financial, of homelessness.” It reiterated that homeless- ness not only severely affects those who experience it, but also puts strain on councils. Spending on temporary accommo- dation reportedly amounted to £840m in 2015-16, a rise of nearly half (47 per cent) in five years. Total estimated Government spending
on housing in England was approximately £28bn in 2015-16. The most significant element of this is housing benefit. In 2015- 16 there were 4.1m claimants in England, costing around £20.9bn. The report noted the DCLG’s “reliance on the market to achieve its housing objec-
alternative policy options to accelerate housebuilding, the NAO recommended the DCLG “review international evidence and report to Parliament on lessons to be learned from the housing policy and insti- tutional landscape of other countries with higher rates of housebuilding than England, in particular focusing on innova- tive methods of accelerating construction and improving affordability.” It asked the DCLG to write to the NAO within six months, with estimates of how many homes councils will be able to build up to 2020. The NAO also recommended that the
DCLG should “improve the transparency with which it reports both its objectives” and “progress towards achieving them.” In particular, it suggests that in its Single Departmental Plan, the DCLG should set out both the cumulative total of net additions since the beginning of its one million homes ambition, showing how many homes need to be completed in future years, and how its individual programmes and spending are contributing to the one million homes target.
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