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The government should not seek to repeat the mistakes of the recent past
The shared ownership Right to Buy announcement has strong echoes of 2015. Ministers should think hard before committing to an under-developed policy ahead of an election, writes Peter Apps
The shared ownership Right to Buy announcement has strong echoes of 2015. Ministers should think hard before committing to an under-developed policy ahead of an election, writes @PeteAppsThe government should not seek to repeat the mistakes of the recent past as it considers its latest Right to Buy extension, writes @PeteAppsMany housing policies are a little half baked when they are first announced, but the new Right to Buy-shared ownership amalgamation is barely a cake mix.
Announced with relatively little fanfare by housing secretary Robert Jenrick at this week’s Conservative Party conference, the idea is that housing association tenants will be allowed to buy a share in their home, starting at as little as 10%.
That is about all the detail there is so far. The unanswered questions could go on for pages – ranging from what this means for valuations to how responsibility for maintenance costs and service charges would be allocated.
These are not minor details. They are fundamental points – on which the success and feasibility of the policy turn.
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But not only are there no answers to these questions, they do not appear to have even been asked. Multiple senior sector figures told us this week that they had not been warned of the announcement, let alone consulted.
The result is a policy that will likely go nowhere fast and take up a big share of the limited political bandwidth currently available for housing in the meantime.
There is a strong element of déjà vu to all of this. In 2015, a minority Conservative government promised to extend the Right to Buy to housing association tenants in the hope of bolstering its election chances.
Four years on, all we have to show for that bright idea is a handful of sales in the West Midlands and years of wasted effort. If this new policy is pursued, we will be starting down the same path again.
In last week’s leader we encouraged Labour to keep it simple on housing and to avoid policies which result from political dogma.
The same advice is worth repeating to the Conservatives. There is nothing wrong with the aim of extending homeownership, but the best way of achieving it is not to find new, more complex ways to sell off our remaining social housing stock.
Instead, the country needs real answers to the housing crisis, which is acutely expressed through the 726 people who died while homeless last year.
These answers start with many more homes for social rent – not less.
There is nothing which says this cannot be an objective of the Conservative Party. Tory governments of the 1950s, in particular, delivered social housing in record numbers.
Today’s ministers would do better to look to their example rather than repeating the mistakes of the more recent past.
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