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16 June 2009
In the Government’s Housing Green Paper they state “that housing is critical to Britain’s future – the decisions we take today make a crucial difference to the lives of generations to come. Our first challenge is to provide more homes.” So housing supply should be concerning Government in a major way. But where is the impetus going to come from?
In recent years we have seen a succession of Housing Ministers and CLG Secretaries of State. The latest reshuffle has seen a new team of Ministers at the CLG and as a result it is lacking in direction – at least in the short-term. John Healey does have experience of planning, but the new Ministers have a steep learning curve and bulging in-trays. Therefore there is going to be a vacuum whilst they try to pick up the baton.
CLG’s remit is broad. They set ‘policy on local government, housing, urban regeneration, planning and fire and rescue’ and have responsibility ‘for all race equality and community cohesion related issues and for building regulations, fire safety and housing issues’. This is a critical time for housing and regeneration when we are only building one new home for every three households that are being formed. Indeed, almost 5 million people are likely to be on council waiting lists by the end of this year. We therefore need to do what we can to help the new Ministers get up to speed.
A General Election will happen within the next 12 months and therefore all the parties need to be thinking about what they can do to boost housing supply. The Tories through their Housing Policy Paper are proposing considerable change in scrapping regional planning. It is simply too revolutionary. The Tories' plans would wreak havoc at a time when new housing production is at such low levels and when we need to invest in our infrastructure. It will make the under-supply of housing even worse as planners and everyone else involved in the planning process gets to grips with an entirely new system. It would be far better to modify what we have and make it work better.
However, no party has yet articulated robust plans to tackle the chronic shortage of new and affordable housing across the UK. I would urge all the political parties to fully understand the issues before developing their thinking further. They need to take a more holistic approach to housing reform.
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Information correct as at 24/06/2009