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There is a glimmer of hope that ministers are coming to see housing as crucial to public policy
The government is finally changing its view regarding public services and that creates opportunity for housing, writes Alex Thomson
The more I think about public policy, the more the problem of silos looms large.
A significant part of this is, of course, a reflection of the way that Whitehall is arranged with very distinct fiefdoms focusing on ‘their’ policy areas, with their own goals, targets, interests and clients, the latter seen predominantly as consumers or instigators of that department’s services in isolation.
Of course there are always attempts to encourage (or force) cross-cutting policy approaches but history has repeatedly shown us that ensuring such attempts bear meaningful fruit in central government is rather easier said than done.
There is also the way that expertise tends, more often than not, to accrue within established subject borders – in academia, in charities, and in the world of work more generally. All of which is context for mentioning how my thinking about housing has changed.
When I worked for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, on the Housing Act 2004 and then on the Housing Market Renewal programme, I was doing (I hoped) useful things that would improve the lives of people across the country – but we were nonetheless inherently trammelled in our goals by the department’s boundaries.
When I was developing and drafting housing policy for the Conservatives between 2008 and 2010, we focused very much on aspects of the planning system and other methods of increasing housebuilding, albeit with some additional thinking about how to encourage a more energy-efficient housing stock.
Since then, my job running a thinktank for six years allowed for a rather wider canvas, in particular because Localis was focused on local government.
And it is in localities that all those policies designed in SW1 interact together, for good and for ill.
This is even clearer in my current role, as head of policy for Solace, for it is my members in local government, in particular council chief executives, who often have the most comprehensive and nuanced overview of how the actions of government (at all levels) are playing out in the real world.
And that means that they see housing not just as a discrete thing to be created, managed or policed, but as something that can impact on the lives of their residents in multiple ways.
I was talking to one chief executive recently who said that his council had nine priorities and that housing could, in various ways, help deliver on all nine of them – so not just homelessness but also mental health, jobs and skills, our ageing society, and cohesive communities.
Of course this view underpins the long-running argument for devolution – by increasing control over public services to the local level and empowering someone (I would suggest democratically accountable local government) to co-ordinate and join up such services, the ability to then ensure that those services are shaped to meet the various needs of an area’s citizens is hugely enhanced.
“I was talking to one chief executive recently who said that his council had nine priorities and that housing could, in various ways, help deliver on all nine of them – so not just homelessness but also mental health, jobs and skills, our ageing society, and cohesive communities”
While what was called Total Place a decade ago isn’t about to stumble out of the policy graveyard, there is perhaps a glimmer of hope that we might be approaching something of a related shift in how the government thinks about public services and that the door might be opening to a more expansive view of the role of housing in public policy.
Two things have prompted this optimism.
The first was a recent speech by Liz Truss, chief secretary to the Treasury, in which she outlined plans to use the Spending Review to “maximise everyone’s opportunities” and “give everyone the best chance of living a healthy, successful life” with ministers being urged to think about “the consequences of our spending decisions on people’s lives – not just in the here and now but long into the future”.
The second is health secretary Matt Hancock’s focus on the prevention agenda to improve the health of the nation, with first a vision document, which featured multiple references to housing, and now a green paper anticipated before the summer recess.
Now this could be characterised as signalling from a couple of possible Conservative Party leadership contenders.
But I would like to think that we are finally reaching the point when the pressure on public finances, even allowing for a Brexit dividend/end of austerity boost, is such that ministers recognise that the status quo is not an option for public services.
And if so, this could be a huge opportunity for housing – and the provision of more high-quality, affordable and accessible housing in particular – to significantly increase its profile within government not just as a good in itself but as a vehicle to help tackle a wide range of other crucial issues, knit together communities, and improve countless lives.
Alex Thomson, head of policy, SOLACE
