Housing secretary tells MPs homelessness and long-term housing strategies might be delayed until after Christmas
The housing secretary has told MPs that the government’s long-awaited homelessness and long-term housing strategies might be delayed until after Christmas.
The housing secretary has told MPs that the government’s long-awaited homelessness and long-term housing strategies might be delayed until after Christmas #UKhousingSteve Reed made the admission during his first appearance in front of the Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Committee, where he was questioned on rent convergence, shared ownership and the expected number of social rent homes in the government’s overall 1.5 million target.
The wide-ranging session also touched on the impact of Local Housing Allowance rates on homelessness, during which Mr Reed confirmed he will still be chairing the ministerial group on homelessness, and pointed out that the government had recently injected an extra £84m for councils to spend on homelessness.
Florence Eshalomi, chair of the HCLG Committee, replied: “That’s good. So will there finally be a homelessness strategy? It was due to be published. We still haven’t heard anything around that.”
Mr Reed said: “That’s right. But obviously, with the new secretary of state and new ministers coming into post, we need to take time to look at where we are.”
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Pressed on a “rough timeline” he added: “We’re doing it at pace. We’ll do it as quickly as we can. But as a signal of the fact that we’re not dragging our feet, that additional £84m that we put into this service shows that we treat this as a priority as we should.”
The issue was raised again later in the session by Will Forster, MP for Woking, who pointed out that the Labour government promised a long-term housing strategy “would be published in the coming months” after coming into power in July 2024.
He said: “It’s 11 November 2025, and we’ve still not had any sign of it. When will we have that strategy that will deliver the homes we need?”
Mr Reed replied: “In terms of the longer-term housing strategy, we are still working on that.”
Ms Eshalomi asked the housing minister to confirm if there was a draft of the strategy, to which he again indicated that due to the change of ministers “we all need to be comfortable with it, and it will come as soon as it can”.
It was pointed out to Mr Reed that his predecessor and the housing minister had promised the strategy by Christmas, and it was not clear to committee members why the changeover in ministers was leading to such a delay in either the housing or homelessness strategies.
The housing secretary said: “If there’s any delay, it will be absolutely minimal. But I don’t want to make commitments to you and then give you a report that I’m not fully comfortable with, so we’re talking weeks, if anything, and if I can meet that deadline, then I’ll meet that deadline.”
He was further pressed to confirm that the end of January would now be the timeline on which the committee would judge him on.
Mr Reed said: “I’m wary of giving you a hard date now, but my intention would be before that.”
Also in the session, MPs asked what proportion of the government’s 1.5 million homes target would be homes for social rent, given that the delivery target set in the Social and Affordable Homes Programmes amounted to 12% of that figure, plus Section 106 delivery on top.
Committee members wanted to know whether the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) had a view on how many social homes will be built each year, or how many social homes are actually needed on an annual basis.
Dame Sarah Healey, permanent secretary at the MHCLG, said: “Not that I have seen in terms of [social homes] needed.”
Lewis Cocking, Conservative MP for Broxbourne, seemed exasperated and described it as “shocking” that there was no tenure breakdown in the 1.5 million homes target.
On the subject of rent convergence, Mr Reed was asked what he thought the level should be, given the sector-wide consultation earlier this year. He replied that it would be wrong for him to anticipate what will be set out in the Budget later this month.
Mr Reed also said he is in discussions about the LHA freeze with the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury ahead of the Budget, after leaders of 40 groups across the sector called on the government to unfreeze LHA rates for the next year.
On shared ownership, the housing minister responded to criticism of the tenure the committee had heard with his belief “that there will also be a role for it”, but confirmed the government was looking at other options to help people get on the housing ladder, such as Lifetime ISAs and mortgage guarantees.
Housing minister Matthew Pennycook told Inside Housing in October that there may be some tweaks to improve the shared ownership model.
After this statement, a report found that the rate of shared owners in England staircasing to full ownership of their home is at its lowest level in a decade.
When questioned on why the requirement for affordable homes on schemes in London had been lowered to 20%, Mr Reed pointed to the drop in starts over the last year, along with the rise in labour and construction costs.
He added: “When you’ve got 10 boroughs with no new starts at all, insisting on 35% affordability within those zero schemes is meaningless, because 35% of nothing is nothing.
“I want to see some units coming through at affordable rates. So we’re looking at how we can reduce the costs... in order to get development in the capital working.”
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