Scores on the doors: manifesto housing pledges

Agent151 takes a candid look at housing pledges made so far in the run up to the General Election.

There has been a steady stream of homeless families turning up at the town hall in the hope that the council will house them. Sometimes they arrive late at night, accompanied by their suitcases and unhappy children, and have to wait in the lobby to be assessed. We don’t have any vacant council houses we can place them in (there is already a very long housing waiting list) and so they end up in expensive temporary accommodation. It is hard to persuade people to take a placement in another area when they have already established their lives locally, but we are doing so when we can.

Incoming numbers are higher than cases found a permanent solution, so our temporary accommodation portfolio is growing, and with it the benefit subsidy gap fuelling the general fund overspend. We can’t achieve the supply we need because we can’t build houses fast enough, and in any case there aren’t many sites we can develop. Private sector accommodation is getting pricier by the moment because demand outstrips supply. It would not be hyperbole to describe the situation as a crisis.

Shelter, the housing charity, diagnoses that the national crisis has been caused by four factors: home ownership slipping out of reach; hugely expensive housing costs; more families renting from poorly regulated private landlords; and rising homelessness levels. The number of homeless households, it reports, has risen to more than 50,000 a year. So how will the main political parties tackle this crisis if they are elected?

Labour says it will ensure 200,000 homes are built a year by 2020. This is short of the 250,000 that Shelter says we need, but perhaps the key question is whether its ideas for delivering the acceleration required will actually work.  Labour also plans to tackle issues in private sector rental market by introducing guaranteed three-year tenancy agreements and a ceiling on rent increases. It will prioritise local first-time buyers in new housing areas, and prioritise capital investment in housing to build more affordable homes. Score: 6/10 – covers most of the bases but lacks inspiration.

The Liberal Democrats have gone large on housing, and will target an increase in housebuilding to 300,000 a year, and plan to set in motion at least 10 new Garden Cities. They will deliver, they say, 30,000 Rent to Own homes a year by 2020, and will ban landlords from letting out poorly insulated homes. Score: 8/10 – gets the highest score due to scale of ambition alone.

The Green Party, in addition to construction targets and private sector rent caps with five-year tenancies, will abolish the right to buy council homes.  Score: 7/10 – a good score for being brave enough to acknowledge that RTB is not a good thing

UKIP’s unique selling point is that it would prioritise social housing for those whose parents were born locally.  It will protect greenbelt and make building on brownfield sites easier, with referendums on major planning decisions. Score: 2/10 – ridiculous!

The Conservatives say they will extend the Right to Buy to 1.3m housing association homes in England. They will build 200,000 homes for first-time buyers aged under 40, at 20% discount. There will be new Help to Buy ISA’s for first-time buyers to help them get a deposit for a house, and they will create a £1bn brownfield regeneration fund to unlock sites for 400,000 homes. Score: minus 100/10 – for a plan that will ultimately reduce the supply of public sector homes and simply does not add up. Just ask the Institute of Housing.

The bottom line is that we need more homes in the right places; that is, where people will have access to transport, jobs, and good local services. This will involve accelerating building programmes, re-invigorating the construction market, relaxing planning restrictions, leveraging new investment, improving private sector rental conditions for tenants, and making home ownership accessible without selling off the family silver to developers. Winston Churchill said: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” We have our crisis: let’s use it!

Agent151 is a senior local authority finance director and s151 officer.