Housing and Planning Bill

During the election there was a cross party consensus on the urgent need to build more housing. Completions last year, at 125,000, were half the numbers needed to keep pace with what the country needs. The housing and planning bill, which receives its second reading in the House of Lords on Tuesday, was the perfect opportunity for new government to tackle this issue head on.  While there are some welcome measures to tackle rogue landlords and speed up compulsory purchase, the overall effect of the bill will be to promote one form of tenure, home ownership at the expense of another, affordable rented housing. Desperately needed new social housing for rent seems to be being written out of the script.

Following the voluntary deal between the communities secretary Greg Clark and the National Housing Federation, housing associations will now have greater flexibility to decide which homes they offer to their tenants under right to buy. Local authorities however will still be picking up the bill for the right-to-buy discounts, forcing them to sell off their higher value properties as they become vacant in order to fund this.

If local authorities are big losers from the bill, then so are social tenants. There will be fewer transfer opportunities to move into bigger properties as they become vacant these are also typically the higher value properties ­and grant funding for new social rented housing will largely end in three years time. If household income exceeds £40,000 in London or £30,000 outside the capital, social tenants will be expected to pay at or near market rents providing little or no incentive to advance their career. If they are new council tenants, the local authority will be required to be give them a fixed term tenancy of between two and five years instead of a permanent one.

There are wider economic consequences of the government’s approach. To have any chance of delivering the level of housing this country needs we need to build more housing of all types ­ sale, market rent, social rent ­and get all parties ­housebuilders, developers, housing associations and local authorities ­to raise their game.