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The Week in Housing: Sunak puts housing under the radar
A weekly round-up of the most important headlines for housing professionals
Good afternoon.
This week, the Inside Housing news team’s workload has been understandably dominated by the Budget and Spending Review.
The fiscal double header given by the chancellor on Wednesday set out his post-pandemic economic plan for the country.
In truth, it was a quiet one for the housing sector, with many of the announcements either recycled or trailed earlier in the week.
This included an announcement of an £11.5bn affordable housing funding settlement, which was announced last year; a £2bn cladding tax, which was first mooted by former housing secretary Robert Jenrick in February this year; and a £1.8bn brownfield development fund that was released on Monday.
You can get our in-depth analysis on the announcements in text form through our key takeaways piece here, or if you fancy listening to us, our Budget/Spending Review podcast can be found here.
As Jules Birch said in his column piece for us this week: “The Spending Review could turn out to be as much about the announcements that were not made as those that were announced all over again.” This will ring true for many in the social housing sector.
Speaking to people in the months leading up to the Budget, there were some murmurings that the sector could potentially have its funding settlement chipped away at. But this did not happen, and coming out of Wednesday unscathed will be seen as a boon for many in the sector.
The start of this week saw Inside Housing publish its diversity survey. This incredible piece of research by Jess McCabe, deputy editor – features, highlighted how shockingly few of the top jobs in social housing were going to people of ethnic minority backgrounds.
To pull out a few eye-opening stats: more than 60% of the 101 landlords surveyed have all-white executive teams, nearly 90% of all board members in the sector are white, and 42% of all executive team members are women. Also, only 5% of executive and board members are disabled – well down on the 18% of disabled people across the national population.
Included in the piece is a full table, highlighting how different organisations perform. See how your organisation has done here.
Elsewhere, it seems October is the month of the report in the housing sector and this week has not been any different.
Yesterday, research by choice-based lettings charity Home Connections revealed that for every council home available in London, there were around 277 applications to live in it. This shows the severe shortage of housing in the capital and how the situation is getting worse. Last year, the figure was 254 applications per home.
Jack Simpson, news editor
Editor’s picks: five must-read stories
- Budget 2021: the key takeaways for housing
- Regulatory judgements: council breaches Home Standard after fire and electrical safety failings
- Hundreds in Housing First programme at ‘serious risk’ of returning to streets if funding stopped
- New ombudsman tables reveal worst-performing landlords on damp and mould
- Jenrick: Treasury blocked attempts for bigger cladding fund
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