"Overall, I hate to say it, but this Election is not going to be fought and won on housing policy reform"
And I use the term ‘fever’ in its loosest of senses given that the outcome, especially after the recent local elections, feels something very close to a foregone conclusion. And by that I don’t mean David Brent’s band, although we’ve already seen some Office-esque cringe-worthy moments in the campaign. I refer you to Theresa May knocking on doors which steadfastly refuse to open during her campaigning efforts.
All in all, as I mentioned in last month’s article, this is the Election that Brexit produced. An Election in which, try as many might, it’s almost impossible to swing the political agenda round to any other issue. Whether that focus be on housing or the NHS or defence or education, or any other, it almost always comes back to Brexit because that’s ostensibly why Theresa May called it in the first place.
And so, even though we’ve heard a significant amount about our market in the past week with Labour campaigning on the measures they plan to introduce – a million new homes in the next five years, half to be built by councils; secure tenancies; an end to ‘rip-off fees’ and ‘unreasonable’ rent increases – it still feels like the policies are getting buried by the overwhelming and mind-boggling changes that Brexit will bring post-Election.
Developing greater levels of ‘affordable homes’ is clearly a policy worth pursuing, it’s just that (given recent activity) it’s hard not to think that the numbers wished for, are just that, wishes. Indeed, in the very same week when politicians are setting out how they would like more properties to be built, we find that the developers themselves are already preparing for the end of the Help to Buy scheme - which I might add isn’t actually due to finish until 2021. And that’s because the run-in times for development take so long that this is a genuine issue for them for sites they are earmarking now.
Now, this isn’t to say that Help to Buy won’t be extended – after all, I think most would agree that in terms of upping the new-build numbers it has been a major success. Indeed, you might also go so far as to say that without it, we’d be even further behind (in terms of housing supply) than we are at present. And if there’s one thing a Government isn’t going to do, it’s jettison a patently successful housing scheme when these have been as rare as hen’s teeth in the last couple of decades.
But, to my mind, it all goes to show how little forward planning there can be when it comes to tackling one of (if not the) biggest problems in this country. You might think that a decision about extending Help to Buy could have been made by now in order to give builders and developers a degree of certainty about their own future, and whether they will be able to sell these homes. Again, it’s not that this won’t be forthcoming post-Election but there is already clearly a need for such clarification, simply because builders like Barratt are planning for a future without it.
That ‘holy grail’ of joined-up thinking still appears to be in short supply therefore, and one wonders whether whatever the shade of Government we get on June 9th, that they shouldn’t be following Labour’s proposal of putting in place a specific Housing Ministry, with a Minister who gets a seat at the Cabinet table. Given how important this already is, one would hope that the next Government takes it seriously and that they may even look for cross-party support in order to develop a plan that can last a generation, rather than one that might fizzle out in a couple of years.
Overall, I hate to say it, but this Election is not going to be fought and won on housing policy reform. Instead, it is likely to come down to a position on ‘Brexit’ and who is trusted to deliver on this. That said, post-Election domestic issues such as housing are not going away, and therefore kicking them into the long grass while EU negotiations take precedent is not the right way to go about it. Instead, we must shape the housing market’s future right now and one would hope that our next Government has the foresight to do this, because if we let this continue then any thoughts of a long-term solution that lasts, are only likely to go the way of the UKIP vote.
