Could building social rented homes save the government money?
The government spends more than £30 billion a year on supporting people’s housing costs through the benefits system, around 15% of its benefits budget. Couldn’t some of this money be saved if part of the budget were spent instead on building social rented homes?
Fire safety four years after the Grenfell Tower fire
In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster, the government focused its safety efforts on replacing ACM cladding (aluminium composite material) implicated in the fire. Even so, four years later, progress is still slow. In the social sector, 78 per cent of buildings affected have had remedial work completed but in the private sector the […]
Affordable housing investment to lead the way out of the crisis?
The UK Housing Review’s annual assessment of government support for housing investment and what proportion goes towards affordable housing showed a significant shift this year. In Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland most support (between 74 and 100 per cent) goes towards affordable housing, whereas in England most has gone to private housing. In 2020, three-quarters […]
The Treasury has made £47bn from Right to Buy but we have paid a price in lost social housing
Government changes to the rules about spending Right to Buy receipts will make it easier for councils to reuse the money they get from selling the homes, but will it lead to enough of them getting replaced? An important concession is that councils can now use receipts to fund 40% of the cost of a […]
Is this housing’s path to net-zero carbon emissions?
The prime minister’s ten-point plan for a green industrial revolution is aimed at achieving ‘net zero’ carbon emissions by 2050. In the housing sector alone the challenge is enormous: just to reach the government’s interim target for housing by 2035 means retrofitting 1.2 million UK homes every year to high standards. Will the government’s plan […]
What are the real prospects for a surge of investment in affordable housing?
What are the real prospects for a surge of investment in affordable housing? The prime minister has just told us that he will not fix the “broken housing market” by “endlessly expanding the state.” At the same time, as the chart from the latest UK Housing Review Briefing Paper shows, the new Affordable Homes Programme […]
Is this the end of Section 106?
‘Section 106’ is the power in the planning acts that allows councils to specify how much affordable housing should be included in new, private developments, and what kinds of houses they should be. Otherwise known as developer contributions or planning gain, a system that was put in place by a Conservative government in 1990 is […]
The Budget was a kick-start, but we need to accelerate on home energy upgrades
In his summer statement Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced over £3 billion of funding to create green jobs, most of it focussing on the private sector where a Green Homes Grant will pay £2 for every £1 spent by owners or landlords on energy efficiency, up to a limit of £5,000. For those on low incomes, […]
David Garnett obituary
Few people have a detailed grasp of how housing finance works in the UK, across the private market and social housing. My friend David Garnett, who has died aged 77, was not only one of these but had the skill to make a complex subject accessible to students.
The housing sector is right to feel anxious about tomorrow’s Budget
March 11 is Budget day, and the housing lobby is right to feel anxious about what it will reveal. Despite some increases in funding by the last government, the current affordable homes programme is worth just £1.5 billion a year. In real terms it’s only one third of what it was a decade ago. Surely […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on