What was missing from the Budget: flexibility for public bodies disposing of land

The reduced sale price can be justified by using the land as housing for public sector workers, particularly those on median incomes.

The disposing body could retain rights to nominate its workers to the affordable housing, potentially linked to the amount of affordable housing provided over and above what a private landowner would deliver.

This would have the dual benefit of both providing more affordable housing and accelerating the delivery of that housing.

While there are instances of housing for workers not being successful in the past, such as the former Met Police accommodation at Trenchard House in Soho (now incidentally a successful Dolphin Living scheme), with changes to the approach, we believe this could work.

Integral to the success of this proposition would be a need for these properties to be managed by professional organisations, rather than the public body themselves, whose expertise is in delivering, owning, managing and investing in housing, and have a proven track record of doing so. I’m sure we can all think of multiple organisations which do this.

We would also favour a broad housing mix not only by size and tenure but via allocations policies to ensure, alongside the nominations retained by the disposing public body, that the rest of the affordable housing is let through local authorities’ affordable and intermediate housing lists, or let on the open market with priority again to local workers.

This would be a truly mixed housing offering

Given the minister’s comments at the conference, we had anticipated that this – alongside the lifting of the borrowing cap – would be announced in the Budget. At the very least we expected an express intention to explore how this might work in delivering more housing, in particular more affordable housing.

Sadly, however, it did not specifically feature in either the proposals announced in the Budget or within the number of consultation documents simultaneously launched by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

“The reduced sale price can be justified by using the land as housing for public sector workers, particularly those on median incomes.”

That said, there is a glimmer of hope that some of the opportunity contained within the thinking of disposing at below market rate to deliver housing may not be lost. Contained within the consultation document – Planning reform: supporting the high street and increasing the delivery of new homes – there is a significant section on proposals to streamline the involvement of the secretary of state in the regime that governs disposal of non-housing land by local authorities for less than best consideration. The proposal would give local authorities greater flexibility to dispose of said land where doing so is considered to deliver wider economic, social or environmental benefits.

While this clearly does not go as far as we had first hoped, it does provide an opportunity. An opportunity to not only test the theory, but also to deliver the kind of well-managed affordable housing we need if we are to continue to attract and retain public service workers on low to median incomes to live and work in areas they otherwise would not be able to afford.

As always, the devil will be in the detail of these proposals yet if we can successfully demonstrate the value of this approach, our initial assessment immediately after the Budget of ‘a missed opportunity’ may turn into something more positive after all.

Olivia Harris, chief executive, Dolphin Living