Boris Johnson cannot afford to put housing on the backburner

Under Mr Johnson, the party has already moved to downgrade the target of 300,000 new homes a year in favour of “at least a million” over the next five (aka fewer than in the past five).

That means there is less pressure to do unpopular things in the South East and less need to pay lip service to the need for more social housing.

Why not, then, divert housing investment from expensive places like London to cheaper parts of the North and Midlands where you will get more homes for the same money?

And then there’s the Right to Buy. There may not be as many votes in it as there were for Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron’s promise to extend it to housing association tenants may be dead in the water and Robert Jenrick’s mooted right to shared ownership seems to have a few problems. But why not divert some of the cash into funding for Right to Buy discounts for housing association tenants in carefully targeted regions like the North East and North West that are rich in marginal seats?

Council housing is annoyingly popular but why not go with the flow and rebrand all homes for sale and rent originated by councils or their housing companies or joint ventures as council houses?

That could be made part of a wider push to direct policy to help existing tenants rather than new ones and turn housing into a wedge issue.

When it comes to allocations, the Tories already have the Human Rights Act and European Convention on Human Rights in their sights as next steps after Brexit – so why not use that to minimise the chances of legal challenges from advocates for homeless people and migrants?

Then there are First Homes. The scheme consulted on last week is an improvement on (non) Starter Homes because it retains the discount in perpetuity but it still looks likely to elbow aside other forms of affordable housing delivered via Section 106.

So far it looks relatively small scale but why not turbocharge it and listen to the right wing commentators urging you to hand the discount over to the first buyer?

Once you start it’s not hard to come up with policies that would appeal to a ruthless operator at Number 10 – at least in the short term.

But what about the long term? If they want to stop housing coming back to bite them in a few years’ time, the Conservatives have to at least look like they are doing something about the multiple housing crises facing the country. What should they do in their own long-term interests?

That manifesto promise to end rough sleeping by 2024 will not be delivered by rhetoric alone and will require serious investment in affordable homes as well as targeted intervention if it is not to turn into a liability.

Why not accept that and reap the political benefits of being seen to invest in council houses – while endlessly repeating how few were built by the last Labour government?

And if the Tories want a spending programme that will combine jobs in the right areas with sending the right signals on the environment ahead of COP26, why not kick off the decarbonisation of England’s homes with projects starting in social housing in the North?

“Tories know that Help to Buy cannot run forever and that ownership prospects that rely on the Bank of Mum and Dad and inherited wealth run completely counter to their aspirational message”

And why not celebrate Brexit by using our new-found freedom to scrap VAT on home improvements, boosting the decarbonisation drive and delivering benefits to existing communities?

The decline of homeownership may have stopped for now but Tories know that Help to Buy cannot run forever and that ownership prospects that rely on the Bank of Mum and Dad and inherited wealth run completely counter to their aspirational message.

In the background, too, there must be concern that the ‘Boris bounce’ in the housing market could be followed by a ‘Boris bust’ once Brexit is done – and older Tories may remember what happened in the early 1990s.

All of these points suggest that the Conservatives cannot afford to put housing on the backburner.

But what will they do? Some things – such as the cuts in stamp duty promised by Mr Johnson during the Tory leadership contest – might look like Budget probabilities.

But reports this week suggest that all departments have been told to draw up plans for 5% cuts to their programmes to fund increases for the government’s top priorities of the NHS, fighting crime and ‘levelling up’.

“The Conservatives cannot afford to put housing on the backburner”

That sounds like ominous news for housing investment and housing benefit in the Spending Review unless they can be presented as being about tackling regional inequality.

Tweaks to two existing programmes might be wise, too. The New Homes Bonus has been a mechanism for redistributing money from the North to the South just as existing Tory policies do the same to council funding.

And, while Help to Buy has delivered more benefits to new homeowners in areas where house prices are lower, the slimmed-down version of it that starts in 2021 has regional price caps that could limit its impact in the North and the Midlands.

Ministers have to find a way to fix the fire safety crisis affecting leaseholders and tenants all over the county – and that means accepting that the limited funding for aluminium composite material replacement does not go remotely far enough and that loans will be seen as insulting.

Similarly, they have to be seen to deliver on the green paper promises of a new deal for social housing tenants – and that means tangible action, not just rhetoric, in the white paper.

And they have to find a way to square the circle on planning between those two very different schools of thought on planning – for example, will the review of permitted development promised in last year’s Spring Statement rein it in or extend it?

The time for decisions on all of this is coming soon. Which road will the Johnson government take?

Jules Birch, award-winning blogger