Category: housing

Build Baby Build

In November we held our 3rd My tuppenceworth event giving you the opportunity to speak to those assembled on an issue that really matters to you.

Mike Swadling spoke on the issue of housing and his speech is below.

“with so much of our housing stock built between the wars it’s seems likely the number of homes in need of replacement will increase rapidly in the next couple of decades”

At the recent Battle of Ideas, I attended a panel on ‘Housing Britain: Yimbys vs Nimbys’.  For a contentious topic there was a surprising degree of unanimity among the panel and audience on the need to build, and even what to build.  Most disagreement came on the process of how to get it done.

I am firmly of the belief we need to build housing, and we need to build lots of it.  There is a general consensus to meet current levels of demand we need to build around 300,000 new homes per year.  In 2022 we built 232,000 new homes. 

In checking the data for this I found numbers for new build and net new homes seemingly used interchangeably. This may be in part because of property conversions, but clearly these are not the same thing.  However, it does strike me that with so much of our housing stock built between the wars it’s seems likely the number of homes in need of replacement will increase rapidly in the next couple of decades.

All this has led to a growing number of concealed households”, now believed to total 1.6 million potential households of people who would like to be in their own home but can’t because of shortages.  We are believed to have about 260,000 long-term empty homes in England but even if somehow these were magically all brought back into use they would solve little of the overall problem.  Even second home ownership lies at about 3% and is little changed in decades.

Whatever the reasons behind it, we have a problem today with a lack of houses.  We have a problem with a younger generation feeling increasingly disengaged from our society when they can’t leave home and build their own lives.  We also have a problem with rising costs for care as an increasingly aging population often face a choice between staying in their own home or being in a care home, with little suitable middle ground alternatives.  In short, we need to build baby build.

“People will more willingly accept hosing built in their area if they believe we have control of our borders and if local people from the community the homes are built in are given priority”

Necessary Pre-requisites

There are however some necessary prerequisites to oversee a largescale increase in housebuilding.  People need to believe these are houses for their families, their community, not just to be brought by overseas property speculators or used to house the worlds migrants coming to our shores.  People will more willingly accept hosing built in their area if they believe we have control of our borders and if local people from the community the homes are built in are given priority to fill them.

“At the battle of ideas panel on housing one member of the audience was simultaneously praising the green belt and complaining about the intensification of building in the city”

At the battle of ideas panel on housing one member of the audience was simultaneously praising the green belt and complaining about the intensification of building in the city.  As someone who lives on the doorstep of the green belt and has seen 157 flats go up next to my home, I can’t help but wonder if one or two of the farmers’ fields in the green belt near me could be used to provide 157 houses rather than have flats built on what was my town’s main car park. 

Don’t worry about us running out of land, it would take about 5 football pitches to build 157 homes at 4 bedrooms (these flats are not 4 bedrooms), that would use 7 of the 17.2 million hectares of farmland we have in the UK.  (This would provide 385 million homes, with currently about 30million in the UK).

The green belt lovely though it maybe, ensures we live in ever more crowded cities, rather than expand them as the need for housing expands. We are in Croydon, a Surrey market town built out to accommodate the expanding population of London, why are we insisting that future generations live in ever more cramped environments rather than in new suburbs or towns further out. 

“Can anyone cite examples where cramping people into tighter spaces gives good outcomes?”

Can anyone cite examples where cramping people into tighter spaces gives good outcomes?  A hundred years ago we were clearing out the slums.  The high rise post war blocks of flats were generally seen as a disaster in my youth. I wonder why we are intent on recreating them.

What to do

So, what are we to do?  I say we need to build bigger, build beautiful, build better, and build for everyone.  What would this mean in practice.

Build beautiful – At last year’s Battle of Ideas, Ike Ijeh the architect, and 2019 Brexit Party candidate, spoke about how he had seen developers have success getting acceptance from the local community for new builds through well laid out design.  Beautiful well laid out communities, which could well include a mixture of flats and houses are more likely to be approved than throwing another box of 9 flats on a previous 1 home plot.

“We all benefit from better high-end homes; we all get the chance to move up the market and we will free up what used to be called starter homes”

Build bigger – I was impressed by an article I read last year on ‘how building expensive homes can help people on low incomes’.  The article proposes we should focus on building more £5million homes rather than £120,000 ones.  To quote the article “adding homes that are better quality than the existing stock allows people to move out of the existing stock into better homes, and frees up existing stock for suppressed households.”  We all benefit from better high-end homes; we all get the chance to move up the market and we will free up what used to be called starter homes.  Few communities would object to an estate of £5million homes being build on the edge of town, and few property developers would sit on this planning permission.

Build better – We need to build new estates with services, shops, schools, transport, and things that people want.  We can’t build just based on environmentalist dreamlands, where someone after a hard day’s work will somehow pick-up the kids from the childminder and pop to the shops on a push bike.

We are not going to build everything we need just on the edge of cities and as much as I don’t believe it should be sacred the green belt has a purpose.  After the war we built new towns in Crawley, Hemel Hempstead, Welwyn Garden City, Milton Keynes, Peterborough, Northampton, and many other places.  These might not make it to your bucket list of destinations to visit but they are good places for work and to raise families.

“Coming into land at Gatwick airport on a sunny day you can see from Croydon to Brighton and view the miles of greenery in between”

Local to us Crawley houses 118,500 people.  Coming into land at Gatwick airport on a sunny day you can see from Croydon to Brighton and view the miles of greenery in between.  Only the airport and Crawley stand out as major developments.  3 more airports and Crawley’s in the view and it would still be overwhelmingly green, 6 more and you would still think you are viewing the countryside.  We could build 2 more Crawley’s in the area of the A22 to A24 corridors and hardly notice.

Croydon has a 10 year housing target from the Mayor of London of 20,790 new homes (2019 – 2028).  This on top of the thousands of new homes already built in the borough in recent years.  One new Crawley built with the industrial estates, shopping centres, office blocks, schools, doctors and everything else needed to form a community could at this rate supply 60 years of growth needed in Croydon and over a third of our annual UK wide rate of new homes growth.

“with about a quarter of the country having less than £500 worth of savings it is reasonable to assume many will never buy their own home”

Build for everyone – There are not many times I believe government can help, but I increasingly believe we need to build more social housing, and government will need to play a part in this. As someone who was born into the Regina Road Estate council blocks now being pulled down by Croydon Council, I have little faith in their ability to provide property.  However, with about a quarter of the country having less than £500 worth of savings it is reasonable to assume many will never buy their own home. We can argue how much government provided housing is needed, who should run it and what right to buy schemes we should have.  But, we do need to provide something for the taxpayer and for renters that is not just busting budgets to pay for private rents.

“Why not offer what I might call free ports of housing.  Designated areas with council tax holidays for new development or major upgrades to a generation of remote workers keen to get on the housing ladder, encouraged to less fashionable parts of the country”

Some of the problems I have described are local or they are a southeast problem.  We have a whole country much of which is not so expensive to live in and could do with attracting more young people.  Why not offer what I might call free ports of housing.  Designated areas with council tax holidays for new development or major upgrades to a generation of remote workers keen to get on the housing ladder, encouraged to less fashionable parts of the country by an influx of similar people and tax breaks.  Let’s level up the country by helping to spread the wealth and helping people better their lives.

We build properties not just for now but for use 100 years from now, we have a changing population, with greater demand and desires.  Why not build better, bigger homes, why not let people have second homes, whilst also catering for those who need help.  We have the land let’s make use of it, whilst also encouraging people to move across the country.  This does require some government action but is best achieved by them laying foundations and then getting out of the way whilst we build baby build.

Picture: Andy F / Building site, Wise Street, Leamington / CC BY-SA 2.0

Social housing is so last century

My tuppenceworth speech by Hilary Judge

“My contention is that it is an outdated concept and selling off better social housing to private landlords and demolishing tower blocks would benefit the community”

The concept of social housing was introduced just over 100 years ago. It started with the intentions of improving the living conditions of renters but has resulted in replacing slums 100 years ago with slums today.

My contention is that it is an outdated concept and selling off better social housing to private landlords and demolishing tower blocks would benefit the community, by encouraging tenants into work, improve property repairs and create an economically mixed tenant base.

The Housing and Town Planning Act (Addison Act) of 1919 was the beginning of social housing in the UK, enabling local authorities to use government funding to build social housing for the working classes. The aim was to provide high-quality homes with gardens in greenfield areas, with indoor toilets and fitted baths for working families who could afford to pay higher rents. Local councils began to compulsorily purchase farms, using the land for development.

These houses were spacious but expensive to build. The next phase saw former slums cleared and replaced with flats between 3 and 5 stories high, being a cheaper alternative to family houses. These flats were also 35% smaller than houses but still had 3 bedrooms.

Construction stopped during WW2. At the end of the war, the government restarted replacing homes lost by bombings with prefabricated houses, which could be made off-site and quickly assembled. These prefabs were supposed to last for 10 years, although there are still some in existence today.

“the quality of construction diminished. Instead of “high-quality houses”, families were housed in high-rise flats”

Another cheaper solution was precast reinforced concrete, where unskilled labour could be used in construction. High-rise blocks of flats were developed using precast reinforced concrete.

So the quality of construction diminished. Instead of “high-quality houses”, families were housed in high-rise flats.

In 1980, the Right to Buy scheme was introduced, resulting in around 1 million homes sold in 10 years, with tenants buying mainly the better-quality homes. Council housing stocks diminished. The precast concrete properties were found to have structural issues and prospective purchasers had difficulty securing finance.

Councils were then left with poorer quality homes considered “hard to treat”. Councils were encouraged to hand over these properties to housing associations and other social landlords who could secure funding for regeneration works.

Private tenants do not have a right to buy – quite rightly in my opinion. However, they do have a proper choice of where exactly they want to live and the type of property that they want to live in, depending upon how much rent they can afford.

“Private landlords generally want to maintain their properties to a high standard as ignoring issues increases damage and costs in the long run. Most provide a much better repairs service than social landlords as they have a financial interest in the property”

Up until the 1980s, rent was collected weekly and repairs could be reported at the same time. Council officers would undertake a pre-inspection unless the job was routine and their own workmen would carry out the repair. As landlords, it could be said that councils were fairly hands-on. Housing associations used small, local contractors but would carry out pre and post-inspections. This gradually changed, so now most social landlords contract out their entire maintenance operations to large maintenance contractors, including reporting repairs.

Opportunities to examine high-maintenance issues, from “lifestyle” to building deficiencies can be overlooked.

Private landlords generally want to maintain their properties to a high standard as ignoring issues increases damage and costs in the long run. Most provide a much better repairs service than social landlords as they have a financial interest in the property. 

In 1996, a total of 26.6m households in owner-occupied properties, 5.97m in social housing and 3.54m in private rented properties.

Statistics from June 2022 show a total of 26.62m households in owner-occupied properties, 5.94m in social housing and 8.72m in private rented properties. So the number of owner-occupied and social rented properties has stayed fairly consistent over the last 26 years, but the private rented sector has increased by 250%. 

By May 2019, claimants of Housing Benefit had reduced to 3.6 million, while 1.1 million households were receiving the housing element of Universal Credit. 73% of HB recipients (2.6 million) were tenants in the Social Rented Sector and 27% were in the Private Rented Sector (970,000). So much for the working families who could afford to pay higher rents!

Social landlords are moving from being councils to housing associations. Although they are “not for profit”, chief executives often earn six-figure salaries, and most management boards are paid. Housing associations do not pay tax on profits.

There is a regulator of social housing, who is responsible for ensuring that housing associations are properly managed, given the scale of public funds that they receive.

“Competition between landlords to have the best properties and secure highest rents. Complete choice for tenants – you can live anywhere that you want if you can pay the rent”

Contrast this with private landlords who only receive tax relief at 20% on mortgage interest and contribute to the treasury with tax on their profits.

Social housing is allocated on “need”, so having children, medical problems and no job all help to secure a home. Tenants also must prove that they are the responsibility of that local authority. Contrast that with private landlords – referencing to make sure that tenants can afford the rent so preference for those in work. Competition between landlords to have the best properties and secure highest rents. Complete choice for tenants – you can live anywhere that you want if you can pay the rent. The incentive is to have a successful career and many private tenants go on to buy their own properties.

Dumping tenants with mixed social needs together on estates simply results in chaos. High rates of crime, gangs and drugs. Private landlords are usually in mixed owner-occupied / private rented areas, so less anti-social impact.

My contention is that if all social housing was sold to private landlords – not property companies but individuals – there would be less worklessness, less crime, better properties and more tax for the treasury. 

Selling 5.9m properties at half average value would generate £800 billion. If each property generated a £5k profit annually, there would be an additional £6 billion in tax.

Image: Older social housing, Hester’s Way, Cheltenham 2 By: Jonathan Billinger