With the general election less than two years away, it is increasingly important for the Lib Dems to pursue ‘differentiation’ from our coalition partners. This includes advancing clear and specific Lib Dem proposals that we will seek to deliver this side of the election. But we should also start highlighting priorities which will form the basis of our pitch to the electorate in 2015.
The emerging agenda includes support for wealth taxes, defence of EU membership and the protection of civil liberties. These issues are as important as ever, but at this stage our platform seems light on ‘social liberalism’ and specifics to deliver on our stated vision of a ‘fairer society’. This gap needs to be rectified with some urgency. We should start with a strong commitment to social housing, including a large scale programme for building new council and housing association homes.
There are 1.8 million people on waiting lists for social housing. The supply shortage should be viewed as one of the most pressing issues facing the country today. Yet somewhat depressingly it has been a pressing issue for as many years as I can remember. And successive Governments have failed to get a grip and build new homes.
Regrettably, the Chancellor appears more interested in further inflating house prices through his risky ‘Help to Buy’ initiative. The scheme has few friends, with some pretty heavyweight commentators such as the IMF and Sir Mervyn King highlighting the risks of taxpayer exposure to private mortgage debt and an asset price bubble. There is a much stronger economic rationale for building new homes – boosting the construction sector in the process.
The quality and supply of social housing interplays with other major policy issues including public health, tackling climate change and welfare reform. And rightly or wrongly, polls show the competition for council homes is also fuelling public concern about the scale of immigration and is one of the drivers of support for UKIP. So there are many reasons for prioritising this as an area for public investment.
Of course, a liberal agenda for housing shouldn’t just be about building new council housing. We need to stimulate private house-building in brownfield areas and enhance the rights of private tenants. I am also an instinctive supporter of the ‘right-to-buy’. But the continuing failure to build new replacement homes raises difficult questions about the fairness of the reintroduction of big discounts. Similarly, it is hard to justify the ‘under-occupancy penalty’ given there simply aren’t enough smaller council houses for people to downsize to. In this context, large-scale building of social housing shouldn’t be dismissed as left wing or old-fashioned. It’s about redressing an imbalance built up over three decades, to provide an appropriate mix of public and private sector provision.
Occasionally, the Lib Dems have talked about housing – Ming Campbell showed genuine passion for improving council estates during his short tenure as leader. But it hasn’t featured prominently in recent manifestos. Showing leadership on housing would bolster our stronger economy, fairer society narrative that is so vital to our prospects in 2015.
* James King has been a Lib Dem activist for over 20 years, and is based in Hampstead & Kilburn constituency.
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13 Comments
The problem is local authorities wasting finance in areas which should not be given priority time. (Should you need a prime example of with evidence please do not hesitate to let me know)… The issue is not where or how the issue is wasters of public funds whilst in public office.. !
Melanie Harvey
The issue is not where or how the issue is wasters of public funds whilst in public office.. !
Whereas businessmen and bankers would never do that? Never waste money on expensive prestigious headquarters, or on entertainment for senior executives, or on self-promoting advertising, etc?
Price of agricultural land – around 7k/acre. You could build 8 houses on an acre, and sell them for around 2 million. Building cost (IKEA/Boklok) would be around 500k. So the planning permission to convert the land is worth just under 1.5 million. If the local council could monetise that, then it could easily pay for a lot of social housing.
What strikes me more than anything about this government is that its core objective seems to be to return the country to the situation that pertained before the credit crunch. Housing is central to this plan. Before the crunch we had an economy that depended to an uncomfortable (and, as we have seen, wholly unsustainable) extend on ever-rising property prices. It was a bubble sustained mainly by too cheap finance. and creating acute generational inequity.
And now? Since the private sector will no longer provide the funding to continue goosing the market the government has stepped into the breach. It’s Help to Buy’ initiative would more accurately be called ‘Help to Sell’ and could well have been arrived at by taking dictation from vested interests on the sell side. it will prove no more sustainable in the public sector than in the private.
Politically this ought to be a godsend for Lib Dems except I suspect that the key players on our side believe this nonsense. We should be attacking Osborne for distorting the market in a bad way that stops it adjusting, for being imprudent with public funds, for dancing to the dictates of vested interests etc. etc. and we could offer a sensible alternative – measures to stop hoarding (LVT), removal of VAT on conversions and brownfield sites (but not greenfield) and so on.
I find it quite amazing that the Tories who preach the virtue of markets are the first to drop them when it suits. Look behind the curtain and it’s clear that all their posturing is no more than an attempt to put lipstick on a policy pig. This is indeed an opportunity for differentiation – and one that is crying out for leadership.
>There are 1.8 million people on waiting lists for social housing.
Is it a reliable indicator of actual need? What does it actually mean?
I raise this as I suspect that many have put their names down for social housing, not because they actually need it but just to reserve their place in the queue, so that the option is there in the future.
Just like the immigration figures, we need better data on those on the waiting list to better understand the real level of need and what is really fuelling this demand. Remember, even with a major transformation of the construction industry (something it has successfully resisted for many decades) it will take several years to build sufficient homes for 1.8M applicants; by which time the population will have grown again…
I agree with James that we should be highlighting Housing as a major issue at the next General Election (and up to then) particularly policies from a Social Liberal perspective……..
we must also take a look at the sheer quantity of vacant property(not under-occupancy), residential and commercial buildings standing empty because the owner is investing in the asset and is just not interested in committing to a tenant who may be difficult to remove when he wants to sell the building.
We must get on with land taxation, giving councils powers over business rates and powers to tax empty property.
Planning policies have been made to make things easier for redevelopment or change of use, but we still need to tackle the ridiculous system whereby new build is not charged VAT but refurbishment is.
The point about tackling the property and construction sector is not simply about getting builders back to work, but every time we move house or a business re-locates all the associated businesses benefit in the process, the furnishing and equipment supplies, and the jobs that all generates.
Yes, we badly need some credible, relevant social housing policies. The lack of these in areas like Haringey , and other innner cities, means t hat we have little to say to council tenants, and therefore fail to win an important slice of the vote. -which Labour councils, of course, can manipulate at will. Council Leaseholders should be our natural territory, because of the unfair and vindictive way they are usually treated by authorities like Camden and Haringey; but there again, we haven’t ploughed that field, so we won’t reap the harvest.
I agree we need to campaign on housing that’s why in london I worked with Chris Butler on a housing campaign pack which differentiates between the different tenures. It is not just more and better quality social housing we need. Housing really needs a regional approach. The shortage of housing does not occur throughout the country. I train housing officers and solicitors throughout England. In some areas social landlords are just happy someone is living in the property it is not because it is a sink estate it is because there are very job opportunities there so no one wants to live there. We should not confuse the housing shortage hot spots of the South and some cities with the picture of housing in the whole country.
Current government housing policy is awful: counter-productive.
The ‘free money’ intended to help first-time buyers to purchase a house is nonsense, as most respectable commentators have pointed out. It’s not really free money: it’s loan which borrowers will be expected to pay back. Buy-to-let house purchasers will find a way to use the scheme for their own ends and will be able to reimburse their loans from rent incomes. – You don’t believe that people will cheat? Hmmm…
The worst thing about the stupid scheme is that OldCon will be doing big favours to their party contributors, the builders.
But perhaps I’m being overly unfair. Well, some of the overpaid and under-educated civil servants may have read about the housing boom of the inter-war years, in particular the 1930s. They may truly have believed that the building boom dragged Britain out of an economic depression similar our contemporary financial disaster.
I would suggest that these ‘experts’ re-read the history books. During the 1930s, there were many economically successful and affluent communities. In his excellent book ‘English Journey’, JB Priestley identified the different countries. Academic historians have managed to find four Englands.
In the 1930s, the industrial economy of the UK did not entirely consist of deeply depressed heavy industries: it was a nation of shipyards and coal mines. South of the Humber, there were flourishing new industries engaged in vehicle construction, aircraft-building, electrical (and even electronic) engineering, furniture making. There was a huge increase in service industries. It was in the south-east, the west midlands and elsewhere that there was a great demand for owner-occupation. Even in Hull, shipping, aviation and milling supplied this demand. Even a trawler skipper could afford brand new two and a half bedroom semi in the new suburbs – with a bit of help from the Halifax!
Builders, both large and small, responded to the demand – and many, many carefully managed ‘mutual’ building societies and savings banks provided mortgages at low interest rates.
In addition, there was much local authority building. Between the wars, several major housing bills, of varying significance, were enacted. Christopher Addison, John Wheatley, Neville Chamberlain and Arthur Greenwood all introduced major bills, of importance to both private and public home-building.
Sadly, in our current economic depression, the ministers relevant to provision of much-needed homes are midgets when compared with their giant predecessors. They seem to think that England can build its way out of recession by providing unaffordable loans to home buyers and, thence, providing some jobs for bricklayers, plumbers, electricians and slaters. Yet a carefully managed programme of both social and genuinely affordable housing could be of great benefit, not just to England but to the entire UK.
Sadly, it seems that, currently, we have no senior politicians possessed of either historical knowledge or future vision. Hey ho….
Thanks for comments above. A few quick responses:
Roland – I agree that the waiting list figure is an imperfect measure of need, and I am struck by the lack of good quality, easily accessible housing data. However, the broad trends are pretty clear – demand is on the increase (longevity, immigration, more single person households etc) but there has been very little new-build of social housing (particularly council housing) for over three decades.
John Oakes – Strongly agree that Lib Dems (in London particularly) need strong messages to appeal to leaseholders. I did some work on this when I was a councillor in Camden (e.g. trying to reverse the ‘computer says no’ attitude to even minor alterations to leaseholder properties prevalent in the housing department), and it is clear that many Labour councillors and council officers retain a hostility to leaseholders that dates back to the Thatcher years.
Emily Davey – I will search out the housing pack you mention. I agree the issues are very different in different regions of the UK. I saw Simon Hughes was yesterday highlighting that three-quarters of London new-build properties have been sold to overseas investors which is an astonishing and worrying statistic. However, I still think we need some clear national policy pledges on housing at the heart of our 2015 manifesto to get cut through to the electorate.
James, Emily – We in Westminster are interested in having a motion on housing at conference; I appreciate that things are getting close, but is this something that you would be interested in doing?
Mark – Yes I would be interested, particularly if you are able to link me up with others interested in this topic. I am on [email protected] or 07971 025 214.