Proof of the pudding

Just as in the US, the electorate will have to weigh up whether to plump for a leader claiming years of know-how or a younger man holding out the prospect of change. Here, people won’t be going to the polls for some time yet – and the unfolding economic drama could yet make an experienced hand more attractive.

But, as the Conservatives met in Birmingham this week, the momentum pushing them towards power continued. They may have been keen to avoid triumphalism, but the Tories are clearly drawing up plans for wholesale change in the firm expectation that they will form the next government. And if they’re right, social housing will face as much change as any other sector. House building targets, a whole host of quangos and even the new Homes and Communities Agency could well go. There will be a tough new approach to the long-term unemployed.

And, even more strikingly, the party will launch itself on a mission to tackle the concentrations of deprivation on our social housing estates. Making the fight against poverty one of the party’s priorities may surprise some. But Iain Duncan Smith, who has been campaigning on social justice for some time now, is clear that his party, and society in general, have ignored the widening gap between rich and poor for too long. As he told last year’s Chartered Institute of Housing conference in Harrogate, successive governments have created a ‘social apartheid’ by turning a blind eye to inequality.

Of course it’s easy to claim you’re on a mission to change. And it’s easy to vow to reform this or scrap that – even if it’s a brand new agency that has cost millions to set up. It’s harder to detail how you will achieve your mission, or what you will introduce in place of the institutions you’ve shut down. And so far, the Tories are light on detail.

Forthcoming shadow green papers could help fill some of the gaps. So too could the review of social housing and the private rented sector announced by shadow housing minister Grant Shapps this week. Housing professionals will want to see exactly how the change the party offers will help them deliver for their communities. What they don’t need is change for change’s sake.