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What sort of prime minister will Boris Johnson be for the housing sector?

Following Boris Johnson’s victory in the general election, Peter Apps analyses the next prime minister’s track record on housing. Pictures by Getty and Alamy

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Following Boris Johnson's victory in the general election, @PeteApps analyses the next prime minister’s track record on housing during his time at City Hall #ukhousing

What type of prime minister will Boris Johnson be in terms of housing? @insidehousing asks those who have worked closest to him to find out #ukhousing

This article was first published in July, following Boris Johnson’s victory in the leadership campaign.

In 2015, in front of a room full of housing association chief executives, Boris Johnson launched into an expletive-strewn tirade about David Cameron and the housing policy coming out of Westminster.

It was during the passage of then-prime minister Mr Cameron’s notorious Housing and Planning Act – which among other things sought to force councils to sell off their most valuable housing to pay for the Right to Buy extension to housing associations.

“He made it very clear that he didn’t agree with the agenda being set by [Mr Cameron’s advisor and former head of policy at Policy Exchange] Alex Morton,” recalls one chief executive, present at the meeting.

“The exact words were, ‘This is all Alex What’s-his-fucking-name’s fault,’” says another source.

Read this and you might think you are getting an idea of Boris Johnson’s politics on housing. Mr Cameron’s party was at this point pursuing an ultra right-wing, free-market policy agenda which Mr Johnson, then mayor of London, was actively lobbying against. But can anyone ever be sure of anything when it comes to Boris Johnson?


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Last October, he gave a speech to the Conservative Party conference which seemed to adopt the exact philosophy he was angry about in 2015.

Singing the praises of the Right to Buy policy, he told delegates Labour likes to keep people in social housing because “they know that as soon as you get a mortgage, as soon as you have a stake in society, you are less likely to go on strike and you are more likely to vote Conservative”.

This week he will walk into Number 10 Downing Street and become prime minister. As he does, the housing sector is asking: what does he really think about housing? And what will he do? Inside Housing has spoken to a number of people who worked closely with him during his time at City Hall to try and shed some light.

The first thing to say is that pinning down Mr Johnson’s personal philosophy is extremely difficult. This isn’t just because he is prone to change his mind and contradict himself. It is also because he relies heavily on the teams which surround him to lead. There is a general consensus that during his eight years in City Hall, housing policy was really coming from his two deputy mayors – Sir Ed Lister and Richard Blakeway.

“The idea that he’s a man who delegates to people is true,” says one source close to City Hall. “Housing policy was very much left to Ric [Blakeway]. I wouldn’t say that means he’s lazy as such but he wasn’t the most focused politician I ever worked with. He tends to drift over the surface of things and only really focuses in if he needs to.”

Not everyone saw this as a bad thing. Paul Hackett, chief executive of Optivo, describes Mr Johnson’s approach as “chairman like”. “I think his approach worked quite well. He set a broad direction and trusted people to get on and deliver it,” he says.

But what was this broad direction? One clear theme cited by everyone Inside Housing speaks to is a focus on overall numbers of housing which was less concerned with percentages of affordable homes.

“Like most politicians it was numbers rather than tenure,” says Brendan Sarsfield, chief executive of Peabody.

Soon after taking control at City Hall, he dropped predecessor Ken Livingstone’s target of 50% affordable homes per development. This target had never been met, and Mr Johnson argued it was a blockage on delivery.

More controversially, he was often willing to call in and approve planning applications with minimal levels of affordable housing after they were refused by London boroughs. Among the most controversial was the sign-off for the Mount Pleasant former post office site in Islington – which Mr Johnson approved with just 98 of the 681 homes for affordable rent, despite the local authority trying to dig its heels in for more.

“He was less interested in quantums of affordable housing”
Inside Housing source

“Boroughs found it quite difficult to get affordable housing out of developers because they knew if they appealed to Boris he would wave it through,” says Tom Copley, a Labour London Assembly member.

“He was less interested in quantums of affordable housing,” recalls one source. “There was some evidence of that if you look at the planning applications he let through, which made concessions to the minimum amount of affordable housing to get the scheme as a whole built.”

While there was no Garden Bridge-style vanity project with housing, there were a number of policies, which were developed during his time at City Hall. These include the Housing Zones programme which saw grant funding applied to bring complex housing developments to the market.

While this was well received and oversubscribed, it was also difficult to track exactly how much housing was being delivered. It also involved directing affordable housing grant to schemes that were in some cases only delivering a small percentage of affordable homes.

Boris Johnson addresses the Conservative Party conference as London mayor in October 2015
Boris Johnson addresses the Conservative Party conference as London mayor in October 2015

A London Housing Bank was also set up to provide loans to build affordable housing. This was far less successful and was grossly undersubscribed. Mr Copley recalls the difficulty in scrutinising the effectiveness of policies of this kind.

“He was congenitally incapable of giving a clear answer,” he says. “It was immensely frustrating trying to scrutinise him – he just used to joke around and try and make people laugh.”

From 2011 onwards, Mr Johnson also took control of housing grant programmes in London – which meant funding the controversial affordable rent product of up to 80% of market rents. While this was imposed on London by central government austerity, the mayor did little to publicly challenge or criticise the policy.

Nonetheless sources say he did ameliorate it – average affordable rents under his programme were 65%, not 80%. There were also fewer conversions of former social rent homes in London than other parts of England, with housing associations generating profits through market sale schemes instead.

“Affordability did matter to him,” says one housing association chief executive. “I remember him saying in a number of meetings that he didn’t want London to become like Paris – with all the poorer residents living on the outskirts. He didn’t have the antipathy towards social housing that others in his party had at the time.”

This became apparent, sources recall, as he pushed back against the policies developed in Westminster by David Cameron’s majority Conservative government in 2015.

“He didn’t have the antipathy towards social housing that others in his party had at the time”
Housing association chief executive

But did this represent a genuine dislike of the policies or was it political calculation? “To be a successful Conservative mayor in London, you need to take a different view from the mainstream party at times. It may have been politics,” says one chief executive.

So what should we expect from Mr Johnson as prime minister?

One source suggests there will simply be little change – he will focus on Brexit and will not have the time or interest to push a new direction on housing policy. “He is pro-homeownership, but actually most of the government funding is already directed to homeownership so he doesn’t need to change much,” they say.

Another notes that given his propensity to delegate, it is his choice of housing secretary that will be crucial.

Mr Sarsfield says it is the team he assembles around him at Number 10 that will be crucial: “Ed Lister was crucial in delivering his vision when he was mayor. If he keeps that team around him and adds to it he can build on what Theresa May has started.”

Mr Copley is more sceptical: “The thing about him is he’s an opportunist. It will be whatever advances the cause of Boris. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him resurrect the forced sale of council housing if he thought it would help him win an election. Either that or it will be some sort of vanity project like Boris bungalows.”

Whatever he has in store for the sector, we will soon find out.

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