6 Industry News
CIH delegates detail what Long Term Housing Strategy must include
A
lthough unaware of the Chancellor’s subsequent injection of £39bn for social and affordable housing in her
Spending Review, delegates at CIH Brighton were campaigning for a new ‘Long Term Housing Strategy’ that would ensure that social housing investment is deployed in the right areas. Te Government had in fact announced it would
be providing such a strategy in July 2024, but it has now launched an ‘Affordable Homes Programme’ instead, but which is to include ‘social’ homes. Helen Armstrong Christie, head of housing at Wokingham Borough Council said that the industry had last had a national ‘long-term housing strategy’ in 1998, and “a lot has happened since we last had a strategy,” and the context “is very fast moving.” She explained that the Government’s aim for the
Strategy at the launch was to “change the standard method of how we calculate housing needs to better reflect the supply and communities.” All housing providers (local authorities or RPs) would have to provide and operate a 30 year business plan. She said this “reset was very overdue.” Sarah Finnegan, head of policy at the National
Housing Federation said that the NHF had long campaigned for such a long-term strategy, since late 2021. It concluded that the previous government had “significant control over the sector, but no long- term plan.” Te NHF called for a comprehensive strategy
that is “really clear on what it wants to achieve,” she said, including “the complex interplay between housing and the wider economy, public finances, and demand-side levers like the tax system.” And it should be developed “in partnership with external stakeholders, homeowners, residents, business, and really clear on how it will deliver and progress will be tracked.” Finnegan continued: “It needs to be more than an
MHCLG strategy; housing links to so many other parts of Government, from the Departments of Work and Pensions to Net Zero. We really wanted to see that cross-Government co-ordination.” As well as a 10-year rent agreement (granted
by the Government in the Spending Review), the NHF was also calling for “revenue funding to protect and grow supported housing,” and “fair and equal access to funding for building remediation works.” She also said that “significant investment in social homes through a big, ambitious affordable homes programme” (also given the green light by Chancellor Rachel Reeves). She said the NHF had worked with CHI to lobby government, and said it was a “huge opportunity to transform housing.” Gerraint Oakley, chief development and growth
officer at Platform Housing outlined some of the real-world challenges of development and planning, in particular long delays in acquiring and building out sites. He cited a scheme in the Peak District for 43 affordable homes that took 14 months from site
Rachael Williamson warned: “We have had this crisis for so long that it has become business as usual.”
acquisition to completion. Oakley asked the large CIH audience if anybody thought the Government would achieve its 1.5 million homes target, and no hands went up. He said: “One of the things we need to open up
as a sector is working with external partners; we work in particular with the volume housebuilders. It’s getting more and more difficult to do with SMEs.” Oakley mentioned that equity and funding models including for-profit organisations “needed to be looked at.” He gave the stark insight that there were
currently 17,000 unsold Section 106 homes in the UK. “It’s not necessarily the case that HAs can’t afford to buy them; they’re doing their decarbonisation, damp and mould, managing customer complaints, everything else they do. To get that right as well as well is a real challenge.” Oakley concluded that the sector needed
“consistency, or we can’t do it at scale.” He said his organisation doesn’t buy some Section 106 homes it gets offered: “If you’re building a new development near a town which works very successfully for a family with two cars, it doesn’t necessarily work for a family in social rent who don’t have a car and can’t access education or healthcare.” He said that “we need the top five housebuilders
to be successful, but if we want to substantially change the numbers we build, we have to speak to everybody about it.” His advice to Government was:
“Don’t speak to the oligopoly if you want to solve the housing crisis, and long-term infrastructure planning alongside unlocking housing in key areas by speaking to the sector.” Following Oakley was the CIH’s newly
appointed director of policy, communications and external affairs Rachael Williamson. She gave an interesting insight, reflecting on the advocacy work the institute had been doing with Government and other bodies like NHF in the run up to the Spending Review. Williamson said: “We want to be more ambitious
and thinking ahead over the next nine or 10 years, that goes a long way from where we’ve been, with sticking-plaster responses to the housing crisis.” She warned: “We have had this crisis for so long
that it has become business as usual.” Te reality is councils going bankrupt because of extortionate housing cost pressures, we know we need a strategy to get us out of it.” Williamson said “while we welcome the focus on
social and affordable, we need to focus on making the other tenures work; people move around, as their children get older they don’t necessarily stay in one place. We need to look at incentives for people to move on with confidence.” She added: “Te PRS is a really tricky sector be a
landlord in, and the Government needs to include it in the strategy,” and advocated cross-party working on the strategy.”
Housing Management & Maintenance June/July 2025
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