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, […]
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 […]
It’s a do or die moment
All the main parties in the 2019 election are putting forward energy efficiency measures in some form. CIH’s John Perry and Orbit’s Christoph Sinn look at how the sector responds and whether it can frame an ambitious yet realistic programme and do its part in tackling the climate emergency.
The government commits billions to private housing – it’s time to fund social homes instead
How much has government housing investment been cut since 2010? Headlines at the time reported that it fell by 60% and many people’s impressions are that it has since stayed at something like that level. But as the UK Housing Review has shown by looking at the detailed figures over the last four years, the […]
It’s time to look again at revenue support for new build
Everyone agrees we need to build more homes for social rent and last year the rules were changed so that both Homes England and the London Mayor can help finance them via capital grant. The problem is that the sheer scale of output required – as many as 90,000 new homes per year – means […]
The loss of social homes must be stemmed
According to Crisis, to tackle new housing needs and address the backlog of overcrowding, sharing and unsatisfactory living conditions, we need to build 90,000 social rented homes per year in England. Yet currently we struggle to produce 5,000. This means that, far from meeting new needs, we’re not even building enough to replace the social […]
UK social housing performance over the last 30 years
An article to celebrate 30 years of the magazine Social Housing. Social Housing magazine was a child of its time. Created in 1988 just as housing associations’ access to private finance was formalised, it was there both to report on what was happening and to provide guidance to everyone involved. It was a time of […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on