We’re at a moment of real opportunity, in a place we haven’t been in decades with so much promise and potential. That’s the view of four leading experts – Catherine Ryder, Greg Reed, Nick Atkin and Geeta Singh, who spoke at a recent Housing Today webinar on the future of UK housing. Between them they own or manage 1 million homes in the UK, giving a valuable vantage point from which to assess the current state of play. But how does the housing industry sell itself to the new administration, and how does it promote the need for change? We have the key insights on what the next few years could look like.
Catherine Ryder, Chief Executive, Place Shapers
A government with an explicit ambition to build more homes, including more social housing is a good place to start if we want to end the housing crisis. We shouldn’t under-estimate the difference that will make. In the short term it may feel like things are not going to change very quickly because of all the challenges we’re facing. But long-term that approach is really welcome. And we do have an opportunity to adapt our relationship to the government.
It’s absolutely vital that we have the support for the building of more homes, including those for social rent. But it’s not just about numbers. It’s about what you build and where you build it. Creating resilient communities where people have access to support and economic opportunities so they can live in a good quality home they can afford is critical.
I went to see one of our South Lakes Housing members recently and they’ve opened a new scheme in partnership with Housing England and the local council [pictured, above]. It’s small – it’s not going contribute hugely to the numbers, but it’s Passivhaus and it’s beautiful. Two streets face one another, with a communal space in the middle. Creating resilient communities where people have access to support and economic opportunities so they can live in a good quality home they can afford is vital.
Funding for regeneration will be critical if we are to respond to the housing crisis. For too long we’ve been piecing together regeneration funding to improve existing homes. It’s too difficult, it takes too long, and it means some areas drop further behind. We need a system that responds to these challenges individually rather than one size that fits all. So it’s great that devolution is being talked about. Having local areas with more say on how they spend their money could be truly transformational.
But we need an answer in the places Angela Rayner referred to as ‘devolution deserts’. Problems come when there isn’t a combined authority, and not much chance of one. The government needs to look at mechanisms for encouraging places to develop strategies to solve crises locally and across neighbouring local authority boundaries. Devolution will take time to get right and there’s more the government can do to bring funding schemes together and extend flexibility in the Affordable Housing Programme. Then we can spend on regeneration. The challenge for us as a sector is how we measure outcomes beyond the number of new homes we’ve built. It may be difficult to do this in a way that is compelling for the government.
It’s great that the Labour manifesto mentions the housing association sector because we can play such a part in the challenges facing this country. Our members work in places where they’ve seen first hand the decline in local authority capacity, and where few other organisations are investing in the area or are committed to its long term progress. We have the infrastructure on the ground and many of our members are filling the gap left behind by others.
But we’ve got a whole bunch of other priorities and challenges to deal with, which limits how far we can step in. Who we house is changing because of the shortage of social housing. That means only the people right at the top of the waiting list can access it. And there will be consequences if we don’t build more social housing. We work with communities to ease entrenched poverty and get people back into work. My worry is that unless the government starts thinking about the type of support the sector needs, some of those things might be at risk. A long-term rent settlement, higher grant rate, funding for building safety: all of those things will help but they need to come soon and be comprehensive.
So my question is: how do we make a case for these interventions that doesn’t sound like pleading? How can we make a case to a government that already has a long to-do list? As a sector we need to show specifically what is at risk and how we can help the government meet its ambitions. Of course our role in economic growth and building new homes is important, but for us at Place Shapers it’s not the whole story. It’s how the sector can respond to the challenges presented by those areas that have been forgotten about.
Greg Reed, Chief Executive, Places for People
The new government feels like a step change politically, bringing opportunities for the sector and the country. It’s very exciting, you can feel it in the air. So, yes I’m delighted to see a prioritisation of house building. There have been a lot of barriers in the way for a long time. Now we need to see the government put their words into action and create the national change that has been promised.
The crisis we face at the moment isn’t new – it’s been 30 years in the making. More people than ever are homeless. There are fewer affordable homes, and social housing lists are too long. So we support the sector’s call to build 90,000 new social homes a year. But what do we need to enable this?
First off, money. The rent cuts and impacts of the Osborne years have devastated the sector. I’d have £15m more funding to spend this year if they hadn’t happened and I could have built more housing. That’s why we need a rent settlement over a decent period of time so that people funding our business can see that we’re stable. It has to be agreed and stuck with. And we require land. Labour plans to help with that, but we need to deliver homes with infrastructure.
Local planning authorities have to provide their own local plans. Only 1 in 5 have done so in the past five years. That has to change, and national government should enable that to happen. Parkhill is a case in point. Net additionality requirements forced us to take over 20 years and use up a huge amount of money just to bring it back to life. A little help from the government along the way would have made a huge difference.
And finally, I had no idea I’d talk about planning so much when I took the job. But there’s a big pipeline. We have 15,000 homes ready to go. We want to do more and it’s vital that these are delivered. The last time 1.5m houses were built in five years was back in the 1970s before the planning laws were invented. It’s a bit of back to the future that’s needed.
Nick Atkin, Chief Executive, Yorkshire Housing
We’ve been on a rollercoaster. At the recent general election, housing was number four in voter priorities. It was 10th in 2019. So it’s important to remember where we were and how quickly the world can change. As much as I love rollercoasters, however, we need to get off this one and have a clear long-term plan instead that spans more than one electoral term.
One of the key ways to get that long-term certainty is to reclassify investment in housing. It could be moved out of the comprehensive spending review and viewed in the same way as major infrastructure projects such as road and rail. At the stroke of a pen that would remove that rollercoaster effect of supply and funding.
We also need to think not just about building, but also our existing homes. The government looks to be keen on retrofitting and improving carbon credentials. Homes in the UK emit about 28% of all carbon emissions and one in six homes are socially rented. So we represent the fastest and easiest route to decarbonising the UK’s housing stock.
But it’s all underpinned by government finances though a growing economy. If you listen to Rachel Reeves, all funding programmes are predicated on that growth. We know the metrics, we know the multipliers around what you get when you invest in new and existing homes. So we can be a part of this kickstarting of the UK economy. To do that we need certainly over income streams and the removal of uncertainty over future rent settlements. The Labour manifesto talks about rebuilding capacity in the housing business plan, something I’ve never seen in my career.
Finally, the regions are key. We have three mayors in Yorkshire, and are about to have a fourth prior to making our bid for independence. That’s a joke, by the way. But we need to tailor our offer to regional priorities. We have a good track record of devolution in Yorkshire, so we can support others in need of local solutions. And we have to be clear about regeneration. We can demolish homes that have come to the end of their natural life and replace them with something more fit for purpose, but we have to be honest about the fact that this has an impact on net supply. One reason we’re haemorrhaging so much social housing is Right to Buy. If it’s mooted that the government is proposing to bring back Help to Buy, then we can change Right to Buy at the same time.
Right now we’re in a place that we’ve longed to be for decades. We have the ear of the government but there’s a real risk of over-promising. We have to be clear about what our offer is and what our asks are going to be.
Geeta Nanda, Chief Executive, Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing
What’s fantastic is that we now have a government that’s willing to engage. So as delivery partners we now have to come up with solutions. We have to speak coherently as a sector, with clear messaging.
But in London we require people to deliver the plans. It’s great that the government is talking about planning officers but in my work I face building control and a long time to sign off high rise buildings. We have a skills shortage. We can unblock planning, but that means nothing if the people aren’t there to build. We’ve had building safety, net zero, an ageing workforce and lots people emigrating who used to work in construction.
Apprenticeships aren’t coming through. That labour skills shortage is something we should talk about. We need more roofers, more carpenters, more surveyors and more women and people from ethnic minorities. There’s a demand for low carbon retrofit skills. We should work together to elevate the sector. We can remove barriers and show how data and tech are embedded in what we do. The shortfall is 2,600 people a year in terms of the planned investment delivery alone.
Another set of problems are the siloed programmes of delivery. We have regeneration funds, the Public Sector Decarbonisation scheme, Right to Buy, Capital Grant funding and the Affordable Homes programme. So there’s a chance now to rethink the roles of each and bring them together. This is about existing money and how we can make it work harder and more suited to the needs of our homes. Regeneration is brilliant, it’s exciting to build for people, create better places, and replace the old concrete jungles. It’s a win-win. So how can we develop that in our placemaking?
There’s a lot of chat around full-profit RPs, about institutional investment capital wanting to enter the market. Lloyds recently published a report supporting the additional delivery of social housing. This looked at a different kind of social housing contract, with a model like a PFI where you get revenue over a period of time paid by the government in addition to rent. This is linked to the building of new homes. Social housing interest cover can come from existing rents but is there another funding stream that doesn’t impact on the government balance sheet and on other funding streams? This could bring different players into the game.
Having worked in housing for a long time, I remember the large numbers of people in bed and breakfasts when I first started. We initiated private sector leasing to get people out of that accomodation and into a home. That has recently come under pressure with local authorities unable to find the landlords to arrange this. In Waterloo under the arches we had tented cities and we got rid of that with the rough sleeping progamme. So there are a lot of solutions out there – it’s often about renaming or tweaking them. At a school in Peckham 50% of children are living in temporary accommodation. What are the pathways to prevent homelessness, save taxpayer money and deliver long term housing solutions? It’s about prevention as well building more social homes.
With thanks to Housing Today for the webinar