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The reshuffle can only mean more frustrating delays to the green paper
Peter Walters says delays to the Social Housing Green Paper are now unavoidable, but hopes that when it does finally appear it will lead to some concrete action
Peter Walters writes about the frustration of likely further delays to the Social Housing Green Paper @peterwalt7 #ukhousing“Nothing much has actually happened” – @peterwalt7 sums up recent government #ukhousing policyUnlike the fabled buses, when two eventually do arrive at once, with housing policy you wait for ages, and then still nothing happens.
Our housing policy – which until just 18 months ago was a Cameron/Osborne horror show of relentless pandering to aspiring owner-occupiers at the expense of everyone else – has mutated, evolved and jerked into a hopeful yet never-ending tale of renewal.
Since last year’s Housing White Paper, Fixing Our Broken Housing Market, we have had the demise of Gavin Barwell, the overwhelming tragedy of Grenfell, the bright and sadly brief flickering of Alok Sharma’s engaging human touch, and the as yet less-than-inspiring Age of Raab.
“Nothing much has actually happened – 78,000 households are still in temporary accommodation.”
Roadshows have proliferated, an Autumn Statement spluttered forth 5,000 homes worth of subsidy, planning and private rented sector reforms have been mooted, and the Homelessness Reduction Act stands out as one clear achievement.
But for all that, nothing much has actually happened – 78,000 households are still in temporary accommodation. New build figures might be rising, but are nowhere near the government’s stated lofty target of 300,000 homes a year.
Largely counterproductive homeownership price-stoking government capital subsidies (amounting to about £42b over five years) still comfortably outweigh by almost four times the amount (£11b) focused on any form of new build for desperately needed genuinely affordable rented homes.
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Once again housing policy is dragged down by ignominious ministerial resignations elsewhere.
Just as drafts of the much-awaited green paper land on the housing secretary’s desk, the incumbent is dragged off to the Home Office – and James Brokenshire finds himself fixed in the glare of an entire sector’s attention.
He’s barely had time to sort out his security badge, find the coffee machine and get the Wi-Fi password – let alone have a moment to ponder the small matter of his government’s new, radical, game-changing, once-in-a-generation overhaul of national housing strategy.
He may be very capable. Gavin Barwell and, by all accounts, Alok Sharma got to grips with their brief very quickly, and he still has Dominic Raab, a veteran of almost four months in the ministry, to advise him, not to mention some highly capable advisors and officials.
He’ll not be short of expert advice, but surely the green paper will have to be put back yet further while he gets to grips with it and stamps it with his own style, or indeed ideas.
Meanwhile, the next solution to the housing crisis is, as they say, unavoidably delayed. Let’s hope when the green paper bus finally does turn up, it will take us to a destination worth waiting for.
Peter Walters, independent housing consultant
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