Would housing really be at the top of the priority list in a Burnham government?

The new MP for Makerfield has often taken positions on things like public control of essential services, council housing, high private rents and Local Housing Allowance that are to the left of the current government.

The question is whether those policies would really be priorities for Mr Burnham as a prime minister with a million and one other things to think about: not just devolution but the topics that tend to dominate the political agenda, like the NHS, defence, education and immigration.

“The answer, says Mr Burnham, is the biggest council housebuilding programme since the post-war period”

For all his emphasis on devolution and building things from below, powerful backing from the top will be required to deliver change in housing against entrenched interests elsewhere in government.

Mr Burnham’s “10-year mission to raise people’s living standards” sounds similar to Keir Starmer’s Plan for Change and “decade of national renewal” at first glance.

But where the current prime minister’s missions had little to say about housing, his successor puts homes front and centre in what he’s saying about “greater public control of essential services like water, housing, energy and transport”.

In this story, the loss of 1.5 million council homes since the 1980s has led directly to a “housing trap” in which the benefits system chases higher private rents, governments try to control costs via freezes in Local Housing Allowance and the costs fall on local councils paying for temporary accommodation, with a “ruinous” impact on public finances.

The answer, says Mr Burnham, is “the biggest council housebuilding programme since the post-war period”. He’s said this many times before as mayor while begging questions that have still not been answered.

For starters, does he mean council houses or is that just shorthand for homes for social rent? And what does he mean by “post-war period”? Housing completions statistics show that councils have built around 4.5 million homes since the war in England, an average of just under 60,000 a year. But the vast majority of those were built between 1946 and 1986, by which time Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives had reduced council housebuilding to next to nothing.

That sounds a more logical ‘post-war period’ and it gives an average of over 100,000 a year. Even if Mr Burnham means homes for social rent in general rather than just council housing, that would still represent a huge increase on current output.

To put it in perspective, even after “the biggest boost in a generation”, the Social and Affordable Homes Programme is intended to deliver 300,000 affordable homes over the next 10 years, of which 180,000 (18,000 a year) would be for social rent. Where would the increase in investment come from, given that Mr Burnham has said he will stick to the current fiscal rules?

“During the by-election campaign in Makerfield, Mr Burnham said that he believes that land is under-taxed”

One answer would appear to be what has long been the holy grail for housing campaigners: greater flexibility within the rules for borrowing for investment that creates an asset and delivers a financial return via rents.

Another came in The Productive State, a report published last week by the Burnham-aligned Labour thinktank Mainstream, which attempts to put some detail on ‘Manchesterism’.

The report envisages a network of regional public housing corporations borrowing at public cost of capital and building on public land to “break the mechanism” of a market dominated by house builders managing scarcity at high profit margins rather than building at scale.  

Mr Burnham echoed that language in his speech, arguing that: “Having that focus on council homes again, and building in all parts of the country, will represent a decisive shift to a more preventative, a more productive state.”

A final answer might to raise extra revenue via something not mentioned in the speech that is rising higher up the political agenda: reform of property taxation.

During the by-election campaign in Makerfield, Mr Burnham said that he believes that land is under-taxed and that he was open to radical reform to shift tax from income derived from work to income from wealth and assets. The inevitable attack from the Conservatives and right-wing press will be that Mr Burnham will tax London and the South to pay for spending in the North.  

Monday’s speech raises many questions, and journalists were not allowed to ask any at the end. But underpinning Mr Burnham’s vision of devolution is a pro-housing message that has not been heard from someone so close to Downing Street for several decades.

As he summed it up: “Imagine if all local areas could build homes people can afford, to the point where they could guarantee one for everyone.”

Jules Birch, columnist, Inside Housing