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Letwin: housing associations have ‘enormous role’ in speeding up large sites
Housing associations can play an “enormous role” in speeding up housebuilding on large sites, former Tory minister Sir Oliver Letwin has argued.
Speaking at Housing 2018 today, Sir Oliver said a wide range of tenures has to be used to tackle the slow rate of housebuilding.
The MP for West Dorset, who served as a minister in David Cameron’s government, was speaking just days after publishing the first part of his government-commissioned report looking at the barriers to building more homes.
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“Housing associations have an enormous role in the expansion that I’m talking about,” he told delegates today. “We have to open up to a wide range of additional forms of ownership and tenure if we going to solve this problem.”
Earlier Sir Oliver said if housing associations were allowed onto large sites – typically developed by the major house builders – there would be “much more opportunity for speeding things up”.
David Montague, chief executive of L&Q, who appeared on the panel alongside Sir Oliver said:
“Sir Oliver Letwin’s review is a breath of fresh air for our sector, and it is reassuring to hear today that he truly understands the barriers to building faster.
“Housing associations like L&Q take a long-term, partnership approach to building homes and communities. Our 10,800-home Barking Riverside development is a prime example of how accelerated delivery can be achieved through securing upfront investment, offering a range of tenures, and getting infrastructure including schools and transport in place early.
“These early recommendations are clearly about partnership, not punishment.”
The MP’s report, published on Monday, concluded that there was no evidence of land banking by house builders despite widespread claims.
Today he reiterated this by arguing the big firms are not “engaged in evil speculation”.
“I don’t think the major builders are doing it [land banking],” he said. “It’s not how their business operates. They make money out of building and selling homes and what they want to do is sell a lot of homes at a price the market determines.”
He added: “They are not engaged in evil speculation, but we do need to speed them up on these sites.”
Later, responding to a question from the audience, Sir Oliver emphatically agreed with the idea of releasing more public land to build more houses.
“I spent years as a minister trying to eke public land out of the Ministry of Defence and Department of Health and various other agencies,” he said. “The Ministry of Defence is currently sitting on an estate roughly speaking the size of Wales; it has as much land as when we had two million people under arms. This is not a sensible way for our country to run.”
