By Hannah Slater, External Affairs Manager
Yesterday the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Angela Rayner, told the Social Housing Summit that previous inadequate reforms of Right to Buy have made our housing crisis worse. She promised to protect our stock of social homes and support more social housebuilding. The Right to Buy consultation was opened a few hours earlier, seeking views on the government’s plans to exempt newly-built social homes from Right to Buy, set targets for councils to replace any homes sold under the policy with another social home, and restrict eligibility for the policy to tenants who have lived in their home for around a decade with the discount falling (from between 35% to 70%) further to a maximum of 20%.
While Angela Rayner’s commitment to social housing is no secret, October’s Budget suggested that the Treasury is increasingly convinced of the argument to invest here. The case for social housebuilding is growing – the New Economics Foundation recently published a report co-funded by the Nationwide Foundation, which showed that building 365,000 social homes this Parliament would yield net economic, social and health benefits of around £225 billion over a 30-year period.
With almost 1.3 million households on the social housing waiting list, and cash-strapped councils picking up the bill for the over 117,000 homeless households stuck in temporary accommodation, the news of social housebuilding investment and Right to Buy reform will be much celebrated by local authorities.
At the Comprehensive Spending Review in the spring, the government is due to set out more detail on its plan to deliver 1.5 million homes, and its long-term housing strategy is expected at a similar time. However, the Budget and yesterday’s announcement certainly provide an indication of the direction of travel for the housing strategy, with a focus on social housebuilding, support for local authorities, and measures to unlock housing developments.
So, what else do we know about the government’s housing plans?
Housebuilding
At the Autumn Budget Statement, the Chancellor announcement an additional £500 million to the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP), enabling up to 5,000 additional affordable and social homes to be built. Details of the next AHP, the grant programme through which government supports developers to build affordable homes, will be set out at the CSR, but the government has stated that investment will run for at least the duration of this Parliament and will support a mix of tenures, with a focus on delivering homes for social rent.
The Chancellor also announced that the government will consult on a social housing rent settlement of CPI+1% for 5 years. A five-year rent settlement will be helpful in providing the financial certainty that housing associations need to invest in building more social homes.
Right to Buy reform will see discounts for tenants purchasing their homes reduced and councils will be able to retain the full receipts from sales, providing them with more capital and incentive to re-invest in affordable homes. This is a big win for Shelter, who have been campaigning for action on Right to Buy to protect existing council house stock.
Unblocking planning
Both the Chancellor and the Housing Secretary have reaffirmed commitments to transform planning rules and “get Britain building again.”
We were pleased to hear the Chancellor announce at the Budget that hundreds of new planning officers will be recruited. This, alongside changes to the forthcoming National Policy Planning Framework, has the potential to improve the planning process and increase the speed of new home delivery. However, we will be monitoring the impact of housing targets given to local authorities and how these have been calculated at a national level.
Community-led housing, an area of focus for the Nationwide Foundation, will certainly benefit from more planning officers in councils. Further support for small housebuilders comes in the form of £3 billion in loan guarantees from the Chancellor, which will allow smaller developers to access lower cost loans. It’s great to see the government recognise the important role of smaller housebuilders, which includes community-led housing schemes, in boosting the supply of homes and accelerate build-out rates, the speed at which developers construct after planning permission is gained. We know that accessing finance is a key barrier for community-led housing groups to scale up housing delivery, so we’ll be monitoring how the guarantees announced work in practice for the community-led housing groups we fund and partner with.
What’s missing in housing plans so far?
While we welcome the government’s commitments above, there were some missed opportunities in the Budget which can be addressed at the CSR and through the housing strategy in spring.
Community-led housing can play an important role in delivering the 1.5 million new homes this parliament, providing homes that people can afford and in places where they are needed and wanted, and supporting community connections and agency. But this does require support from government, which wasn’t evident in the Budget. Alongside the Community Land Trust Network, we have been calling for the renewal of the Community Housing Fund to provide much-needed revenue grants for projects and enabling infrastructure, and a re-wiring of government financial mechanisms, such as the Affordable Homes Programme, to enable communities to access funding and to diversify the housing market.
Decent, affordable homes are the foundations of healthy, thriving lives, and are key to building strong communities, supporting people’s health and growing our economy.
The Foundation’s CEO Kate Markey gave the plenary speech at yesterday’s Social Housing Summit, alongside Chair of Homes for All David Orr, about the need for the government’s forthcoming housing strategy to create a shared vision of what would a well-functioning housing system looks like so that everyone has access to a decent, affordable home.
The strategy must be a 20 – 30 year shared, cross-party vision which recognises the interrelationships and interactions between housing, the economy, health, education and other key elements of society. Such a vision would enable the careful implementation of housing policies which support families and create sustainable communities that stimulate long-term growth and public savings.
To future-proof this vision, Homes for All is calling on the government to secure its long-term legacy on housing by establishing in a law an independent national housing committee to oversee implementation of the strategy and provide expert oversight.
After years of apathy and short-term thinking on housing, the strong message coming from government that homes are essential social infrastructure, and the promise of a housebuilding drive to improve the availability of affordable and social homes, is hugely welcome.
Nevertheless, unaffordable, indecent homes are increasingly undermining people’s lives and it is clear that the scale of the housing crisis demands more investment and a commitment to a long-term strategy and action from government.