Everywhere you look, housing, that most basic of necessities, is in crisis. Having a safe and stable home is crucial for a child’s development and the welfare of any person, of any age. Yet in the world’s fourth largest economy, after 10 years of a Labour government, there are 95,000 homeless families and the number waiting for their own home on the social housing register has risen by 60%!
Liberal Democrats believe that every family should live in an affordable home. Meeting these current and future housing needs will mean building far more affordable houses each year than the Government has done so far, and more, too, than it now promises. That’s why I’m bringing forward plans not just to build more homes, but to ensure than those homes will be both accessible to those who need them most, and to the highest environmental standards, so that people can save on their fuel bills and safeguard our planet for future generations.
Nationally, in addition to the 130,000 open market homes being built each year, we intend to provide 1.3 million dwellings over ten years, half of which will be social homes to rent. The remainder will be for ‘intermediate’ sale with affordability locked in when the property is sold on. This will ensure housing supply where it is needed, whilst ensuring that nobody is left behind.
It’s easy to announce that you are going to build more homes, but harder to outline the ‘how’ and the ‘where’. At the party’s Spring Conference in Liverpool this weekend, I will be presenting a new policy paper, ‘Homes for All’, setting out the details of our approach. For a start Liberal Democrats recognise that there isn’t a single UK housing market, there are scores of them – including in the social sector. So while government must give a lead from the centre it is also vital to enable local authorities to tackle the housing situation in their area by drawing on a wide range of different policy measures appropriate to their circumstances.
Councils will also be able to pilot schemes investing in rising land values, resulting from planning permission being granted through tariff based systems, as well as gaining value from Community Land Auctions. Developers will not only be providing new homes, but also helping to pay for the infrastructure needed to sustain a true community.
It is the duty of a responsible government to develop new policy instruments. We will therefore encourage not-for-profit companies to develop mixed tenure developments funded by private finance, as well as introducing a new equity mortgage scheme (supported by the Government) to replace the existing jumble of confusing and ineffective schemes to promote wider, low-cost home ownership.
We also want to improve existing social housing. It is not enough simply to provide a home, we must also ensure a high quality of living for all. Authorities will be allowed to re-invest funds from Right-to-Buy sales into new social housing, with new homes integrated into mixed developments to diversify the housing stock. In addition, we would ring-fence the income from the Housing Revenue Account for local investment. This will provide the funding and flexibility required to create the comfortable, diverse and compassionate society that the Liberal Democrats envisage.
The solutions to the current shortages and unfairness of the housing ‘market’ don’t just demand more supply, but more quality and responsibility, too. That’s exactly what the Liberal Democrats’ ‘Homes for All’ policies are all about.
* Andrew Stunell is Liberal Democrat MP for Hazel Grove.
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7 Comments
Agree completely. While I overall agree with the Right to Buy, because it extended home ownership and broke up monolithic council estates, Thatcher should never have restricted councils building more homes. Even in middle-class areas, people would be surprised by how much demand/need there is for social housing. We shouldn’t be forcing the vulnerable into the arms of Rachmanite landlords.
We should be learning from past mistakes in building new social housing. Listen to the tenants. Don’t build any more one-class estates, establish a real mix of tenure. And establish that dwelling in a council house is respectable for people who work, so that it won’t be stigmatised and estates can improve.
All subsidy for affordable homes is ultimately cash in the pockets of landowners whom we knew how to deal with in 1909 but seem to have lost that knowledge since somewhere.
Ultimately the only measure that will deliver a sustainable housing market in which everyone can hope to participate on a level playing field is by taxing local values in the for of LVT or SVR.
Four years ago, before Andrew was on the housing brief, we started to develop a housing policy paper. During those debates I was told I could not introduce LVT because that would be a “txation policy matter” and that our subsequent taxation policy groups would be instructed to look at LVT for making housing more affordable.
That didn’t happen properly, not to the point of having SMART policy about it anyway, such as one could put in a manifesto, and now we are dancing around the issue again in our latest housing statements, despite the new leader talking up LVT for affordable housing during his election campaign.
We can never logically or philosophically address the housing problem we have in the UK without LVT, without altering the way we understand our relationship with and rights to land. And no housing policy oir paper is complete without such a caveat.
May I once again remind Herbert of his fine words in 1923:
“The value of land rises as population grows and national necessities increase, not in proportion to the application of capital and labour, but through the development of the community itself. You have a form of value, therefore, which is conveniently called ‘site value,’ entirely independent of buildings and improvements and of other things which non-owners and occupiers have done to increase its value – a source of value created by the community, which the community is entitled to appropriate to itself. …In almost every aspect of our social and industrial problem you are brought back sooner or later to that fundamental fact.”
Spot on Jock.
It’s little short of tragic that after 100 years with the Liberal solution in our hands we continue to piddle about with a myriad of worthy initiatives which misunderstand the basic economics of the problem and ultimately exacerbate it.
Unfortunately and predictably, the “Homes For All” paper is another sop in this regard. “We can build more than you can build” is a message lacking in credibility both in terms of numbers and timescale. There are a million empty properties right NOW that the market would immediately start turning into affordable dwellings at just the threat of the right tax incentive – LVT.
Sure, there’s a place for Community Land Auctions and for Community Land Trusts, but they can’t and won’t deal with the massive existing waste in our housing stock and the need to rebuild current communties before we start building idealistic new “eco-towns” – an oxymoron if ever there was one.
And while I’m on, let’s finally find the balls to ditch our fatal attraction for LIT – a policy guaranteed to ensure another big jump in house prices just as scrapping the rates did under Thatcher. LDYS had the right idea at their conference last year.
And where’s our housing spokesperson, Lembit, in all of this? Please let’s give this brief to someone who cares about it which Lembit patently doesn’t.
To be fair, I think th paper of Andrew Stunell’s he is now bigging up before the conference debates it was written and presented to FPC before the end of the leadership campaign, so while he was the housing spokesman. It would be interesting to know whether Lembit endorses it as is nevertheless. It is, after all, in many ways a restatement of existing policy. Although there are a number of issues that might make us hostage to fortune (I seem to recall a promise that meeting the need will not involve building in greenbelt for example). And I suppose one of the purposes of the debate at conference will be to agree or not the basic premise that it’s a good idea just to keep going on trying to build more and better than each time Labour announces a figure for new housing or whether there is a better way.
This is a very interesting discussion and the motion contains some useful suggestions however despite Andrew Stunell referring to the UK market we should not forget that this is English-only poicy. This is made clear in the motion. The exception is the proposals in the motion referring to stock transfer and treasury rules, which the motion says are England-only but in fact are Federal.