Housing Market Broken

Ministers will admit England's housing market is "broken" as they unveil new plans to build more affordable homes. The government says 250,000 new homes are needed each year and says it is lagging behind schedule. The new housing strategy for England includes forcing councils to plan for their local housing needs and giving them powers to pressure developers to start building on land they own. Labour accused the government of "seven years of failure" on housing. Read more on the BBC website.

Older People To Get Help To Downsize

Theresa May’s government will use its flagship housing strategy to make it easier for older people to move into smaller homes, which could free up larger properties for families. A policy to incentivise more good-quality, new-build sheltered accommodation will be included in a white paper, which also aims to break the dominance of a limited number of large housebuilders. Councils, housing associations and smaller developers will be encouraged to build more as the government sets out how it plans to meet a target of 1m new homes by 2020. Read more on the Guardian website.

Affordable Rent Measures Promised In Housing White Paper

The government is promising a new emphasis on people who rent their homes when it unveils its housing strategy for England. Housing Minister Gavin Barwell said there would be minimum tenancies and more homes built for rent in a "change of tone" from previous Tory policy. He said the government had not given up making home ownership available to all. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the rental market was "incapable of giving people the security they need". Read more on the BBC website.

More Government Support For Self-Build

Self-build is an important element of the government’s housing strategy, and supports action to help new house building firms and get empty and redundant buildings back into productive use. Communities Minister Don Foster has announced a series of measures to ensure the self-build market is opened up to those on lower incomes. These include:

• Providing new grant funding for community self-builders
• Working with councils to increase land for self-build plots
• Removing unfair taxes from self-builders
• Freeing up more redundant public sector land for self-builders

Read more on the Govuk website.

Housing Report Critical Of Government 'Short Termism'

Successive governments have failed to produce a coherent long-term strategy for housing, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has said.  In a report, the RICS housing commission said some of the coalition's policies were providing short-term help for the house-building industry.  But it argued that ministers' lack of consistency over the past 50 years has exacerbated the failures of the market.  The RICS study concluded that the housing market has not delivered enough homes at affordable prices.  Read more on the BBC website.

HCA Releases Delivery Plan for Next Two Years

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has promised “robust economic regulation” of social landlords as part of its plan for the next two years. As well as its responsibilities as regulator, the HCA has set out key priorities in the delivery of new affordable homes, the release of public land for development, and support for economic growth through its various programmes.  The HCA’s Corporate Plan 2013-15 details delivery targets and how the agency will use its “commercial expertise, land assets and track record of delivering investment in affordable housing” to help it make a major contribution to the Government’s Housing Strategy, with its target to deliver up to 170,000 new affordable homes across England by 2015.  For 2012/13 the HCA said it is aiming to deliver 26,500 new homes with over 21,000 of those being affordable. Read more on the HCA website.

Shapps Rules Out Leaseholder 'Exploitation' Laws

The housing minister has ruled out legislation to protect leaseholders despite a television documentary suggesting councils are profiting from repairs deals. Channel 4’s Dispatches programme suggested leaseholders were being overcharged for repairs works and local authorities were pocketing the left over cash.  But Mr Shapps said while landlords should act responsibly ‘more and more red tape’ was not the answer.  ‘The vast majority of the country’s three million leaseholders are satisfied with the service they receive from their freehold landlord,’ he said.  The programme was shown on the same day liberal think tank CentreForum released a report arguing that regulation for the leasehold sector was ‘urgently needed’.  ‘The number of leasehold properties will increase significantly in the coming years, precisely because of other government policies – both the right-to-buy and the housing strategy to increase the supply of homes,’ the paper A new lease of life says.  ‘The government must therefore seek to integrate policy so that reform of the leasehold system [is] pursued alongside the development of new houses.’ Download a copy of the paper from the CentreForum website.

Together At Home: A New Strategy for Housing

IPPR’s ongoing fundamental review of housing policy has shown that English housing is unfit for purpose. In this final report, we bring together a number of policy strands to present a new and often radical strategy for housing in this country. Below is an extract from the report. Many of the problems in English housing are deeply embedded. Demand has heavily outstripped supply for decades. Homeownership is too often out of reach. Social housing is being residualised. The private rented sector remains largely unprofessional and insecure and those who live in it have too little control. Meanwhile, the housing benefit bill soars at over £20 billion a year, and rising. England remains one of the richest countries in the world, but it is failing properly to house its people. The result is a segregated system with insufficient mobility between housing sectors and social divisions that are entrenched rather than overcome. Housing policy has been piecemeal and disjointed across various departments under governments of all colours. Download a copy of the report from the IPPR website.

Benefit Cuts Pushing Claimants Out Of City

Anecdotal information suggests that some benefit claimants have started to move out of Cambridge to cheaper areas and the city council is not expecting the situation to get better anytime soon.  In its draft housing strategy for the next three years Cambridge City Council says the Government's welfare reforms mean the LHA is now "insufficient" to cover even lower quartile private rents in the city.  The report says: "Anecdotal information suggests that some benefit claimants have started to move out of the city to cheaper areas. As well as the effects on the people concerned, this could impact on recruitment by local businesses, on travel to work patterns, on the balance of communities, etc."  The document says that other reforms, including the removal of the single-room rate for single people aged 25-34, increased deductions for non-dependants etc are also "starting to impact on a number of claimants".  Read more on 24dash.

Housing Supply Expert Questions Government Plans

The head of a major review into housing supply has questioned whether the coalition government’s strategy will deliver enough homes. Speaking at a British Property Federation residential conference, Kate Barker said the Laying the foundations housing strategy published last November contained reasonable policies for the next two years, but that more work would be needed after the downturn. Ms Barker, who was the author of a landmark review that shaped the housing policy of the Labour government when it was published in 2004, praised the new homes bonus and initiatives to free up public land for development. Read more on Inside Housing.

Tackle Rogue Landlords, Shelter Urges Government

Shelter is calling on the Government to toughen sentencing for serial rogue landlords. Shelter is asking Grant Shapps, the Housing Minister, to keep the Government’s promises in their Housing Strategy in November 2011: to ‘deal with rogue landlords’ and ‘tackle dangerous and poorly maintained homes’. Despite the Government’s assurances, Shelter says that rogue landlords are still cashing in on the high demand for rented homes, and trapping families in squalid and sometimes dangerous conditions. Shelter wants the Housing Minister to take five steps to tackle landlords who break the law. Read more on the Shelter website.

Shapps Hits Back At IPPR

Grant Shapps has hit back at a report warning that the Government's Housing Strategy is likely to lead to 'subsidised stagnation', unless the housebuilding industry is reformed. The Institute for Public Policy and Research (IPPR) said fundamental reform of the housebuilding industry was necessary for the Government to get more bang for the taxpayers' buck. However, the housing minister Grant Shapps said the IPPR's plans "just don't stack up". He said: "It seems they've missed the fundamental point of the Housing Strategy which is designed to get much better value for money. As a result we will push developers and builders harder than ever before to play their part to deliver new homes quickly, securing excellent value for each taxpayer's pound. For example, our new Affordable Housing programme will cost the taxpayer far less per home by stretching builders and housing associations to contribute on average 25 per cent more towards the costs.” Read more on the CLG website.

Reform Needed To Halt ‘Lost Decade’ Of Housebuilding

The UK is at risk of a ‘lost decade’ of housebuilding unless the development industry is reformed, a think-tank has warned. In a new report, the Institute for Public Policy and Research (IPPR) warns that the past two British house building recessions, starting in 1974 and 1990, both resulted in a ‘lost decade’ for housing output. It says there are good reasons to believe the current trajectory of the building sector is “following a similar path to deliver another lost decade for market housing output”. The IPPR says we currently have a housing industry which looks to make large incomes off small volumes of houses. It says if things don’t change housebuilders are likely to use the money, land and guarantees - laid down in the Government’s Housing Strategy - not to build more homes but to build homes in different places. Download a copy of the report from the IPPR website.

Triple Threat to Housing on Funding, Welfare and Public Perception

A lack of funding, the impact of welfare reform and little public interest in social housing is the triple threat facing housing professionals working in the UK, according to a survey of Guardian Housing Network members. Polling members and readers of the network, the survey found that housing staff are torn over the most pressing of the problems they face. Welfare reform and changes to housing benefit payments was perceived as the biggest problem by 29% of professionals, while 27% pointed to the dearth of funding for new development. A further 16% warned that a lack of public interest in housing issues was holding back the formulation of new policies to tackle the sector's problems. Despite the publication of the government's housing strategy in November, 72% of respondents insisted the government does not have a set of coherent policies in place to tackle the housing crisis. Read more on the Guardian website.

Strategic Housing for Older People

To coincide with the Government's Housing Strategy and a 'deal for older people's housing', this Strategic Housing for Older People (SHOP) Resource Pack offers a sector-led approach to meeting the housing demand and supply challenges for an increasingly ageing population. SHOP provides a framework and a basket of accompanying tools for councils, public and private sector developers and providers to develop their strategic market position and take the initiative in designing and building homes that older people want, including extra care housing. The papers and accompanying tools in this Resource Pack support a variety of activities including:
*how to develop an understanding of what future demand is likely to be for housing for older people
*what does the market look like now and how should it look in the future
*what are the key success factors in the service design process for extra care housing
*how do you promote and market extra care housing
Download the pack from the housinglin website.

HCA Publishes Bidding Guidance for Community Housing Schemes

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has published a toolkit designed to help partners put communities in charge of development in their area – along with guidance on how community-led groups can apply for funding to take on development themselves. Part of the Government’s recent Housing Strategy, the HCA has published the bidding guidance and criteria on how community-led groups can apply for funding to take forward their own housing and regeneration projects. These groups could include co-operatives, mutuals, co-housing, self build, Community Land Trusts and the emerging Community Right to Build. Funding is available as part of the Affordable Homes Programme, which aims to deliver up to 80,000 affordable homes by 2015, and is part of the HCA’s enabling and investment role and commitment to localism. Read more on the HCA website.

Planning Blow Risks 16,000 Affordable Homes

Councils could be forced to sacrifice 16,000 affordable homes after the government said they should ‘reconsider’ existing planning deals. The government’s long-awaited housing strategy which contains proposals to require local authorities to reconsider section 106 agreements put in place in ‘more prosperous’ times before April 2010 was launched recently. The strategy, which David Cameron described as a ‘radical’ way to ‘get Britain building again’, estimates that there are 82,000 homes in stalled schemes across England which would benefit from renegotiation with developers. Of these 82,000 homes, 16,000 would have been affordable, according to the National Housing Federation - the same number of homes the government hopes to see built through a separate £400 million ‘Get Britain building’ investment fund to kick-start frozen developments. Read more on Inside Housing.

Flagship Tory Council Presses Government on Right to Buy Receipts

Hammersmith and Fulham (HandF) Council has called for local authorities to be allowed to retain all receipts from sales under the new Right to Buy scheme to enable them to build more affordable homes. The Conservative-controlled council has been actively lobbying Government for a change in Right to Buy policy after seeing a slump in sales from 245 in 2003 to 2004 to just seven last year. This slump can be attributed to the fact that the Right to Buy discount was slashed from £38,000 to £16,000 in 2004. Currently, when a social housing tenant buys their property under Right to Buy the majority of the proceeds go to Central Government but HandF says this must change if the Government is going to get close to the 'one for one' aspiration it set out in the Housing Strategy. Read more on the HandF website.

"We Need To Go For Growth"

The Prime Minister spoke to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) at their annual conference in London. This extract covers housing.
“The shortage of credit and lack of confidence affects some parts of the economy more than others. One of the markets that is particularly blocked is the housing market. The consequence of the credit crunch is that the lenders won’t lend, the builders won’t build and the buyers won’t buy. Nobody wants another borrowing boom but when first time buyers on a good salary can’t get a reasonable mortgage the market grinds to a halt. And that ricochets round the economy hitting builders, retailers and plumbers alike. So this morning the Deputy Prime Minister and I launched a radical new strategy to support new mortgages for up to 100,000 people who would otherwise be locked out of home ownership. We’re also selling council houses house again and using the money to build more houses. And we’re rewriting planning rules so the construction industry can grow while protecting our green belt and National Parks and ensuring sustainable development. You have asked for a planning revolution. We are delivering it. We will restart the housing market and get the nation building again.” Read the rest of the speech on the Number10 website.

Housing Strategy: Shapps Sets Out Target for 200,000 Homes A Year

Grant Shapps wants to double the number of homes being built each year to alleviate the country's housing crisis. The number of houses built in England fell to a record low of just over 100,000 in 2010, the lowest overall number in any peacetime year since 1923. The Government will today (21 November) publish its long-awaited housing strategy setting out plans to increase supply over the next four years. The plans include;
*Using the Right to Buy proceeds to build 100,000 extra homes which be let at rents up to 80% of the market rent.
*Giving public sector land to developers and housing associations on a 'build now pay later' basis - which is expected to create 100,000 more homes.
*A £400 million fund to target housebuilding schemes that have stalled through a lack of development finance. The fund aims to "unlock" the construction of up to 16,000 homes, around 3,200 of which will be affordable properties.
This will be alongside measures already announced including a £1.8b billion fund to help build 170,000 homes up to 2015 - which will be mainly delivered by housing associations. Read more on 24dash.