Yawn and stretch, the government have appointed a new housing Czar in place of the thoroughly discredited Angie Rayner, former Deputy Prime Minister, who no doubt is ‘licking her wounds’ for having been caught with her ‘fingers in the till’.
Clearly, she had learnt nothing from the free gifts’ controversy in September 2024, when she accepted all manner of goodies from Lord Alli.
Then, a police probe ensued shortly after since she allegedly misrepresented her primary residence from the entry in the Electoral Register in order to avoid Capital Gains Tax. Now her most recent debacle, a brazen attempt to avoid £40,000 in Stamp Duty on a flat in Hove, worth £800,000, that she purchased in May of this year. Since this was her third abode, I’m not sure if people will shed many tears for her, having witnessed such gluttonous behaviour.
If we can’t rely on the Housing Minister to do the right thing on SDLT, what standards does this government represent to the populace?
MILKY BAR KID IS TOUGH AND STRONG
The ground I’m afraid is littered with spent housing ministers who have failed to meet their targets over the last 10 years.
Mr. Steve Reed, OBE, who may fleetingly think of himself as the ‘Milky Bar Kid, who is tough and strong’ (Am I showing my age?) will be the seventeenth housing minister to go into bat on this matter.
I will ask you for forgiveness for pursuing the metaphor further, and far be it for me to prejudge his cricketing skills, but let’s put it this way; I am sure we are not looking at a David Gower or Geoff Boycott.
You don’t need to be a clairvoyant to work this out but my advice to him is, don’t give up your day job and let the funeral director of career prospects measure your torso for its certain burial.
BUILD BABY BUILD
He has certainly come out fighting with a catchy soundbite, ‘Build Baby Build’ (I am sure Mr. Trump does not feel threatened by this version of slogan plagiarism) which sounds great on first hearing, but oh dear, if only life was so simple!
I shall do such things. What they are, yet I know not
I hear overtures from Shakespear’s King Lear: ‘I shall do such things. What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be the terrors of the earth’ (King Lear, Act two, scene four).
I always wear a wry smile when the new appointment assures us how much more that they are going to do than the previous incumbent, particularly as Angela Rayner was so proud of her ‘achievements’.
Sound bites are all fine and dandy but as we all know, they make better press headlines than they do to change anything on the ground.
THE GREAT STEEPLE CHASE
Here are a sample of the obvious hurdles in the great steeple chase named ‘Trying to build enough housing to satisfy the needs of the UK’.
Planning system bottlenecks
Delays in planning approvals can take months or years to materialise, particularly as the councillors are paranoid about Nimbyism (even more so when the local May elections approach) and perfectly worthy schemes become snarled up with unnecessary bureaucracy and regulation.
As an illustration, planning consents are down 7% this year versus last year, which will exacerbate the problem of building new homes to meet the governments targets.
Funding constraints
Governments often pledge ambitious public spending targets without fully allocating the necessary funding.
Much of the building is expected to be done by private developers who are profit driven and will only deliver homes fast enough if the economic climate suits them and building and finance costs do not strangle perfectly good sites.
Construction industry challenges
There is a perceptible lack of skilled workers, particularly in the construction trades although as there is now less building going on, it has become a diminished concern.
Inflation of material costs and supply chain disruptions make it well nigh impossible to work on fix-price projects and therefore, it is only a cost-plus arrangement that will suit a UK wide developer today. This brings a financial unpredictability into the frame, which undermines confidence in the sector and spooks lenders.
There is a limited amount of band width to scale up production, even if the government wanted to open the ‘sleuth gates’ of flow.
Land availability
Even though only 7% of the UK is built upon, there is still a land shortage, and it is expensive.
Developers often sit on their sites in the hope that property prices will rise before building out the schemes. Sometimes they sell-on the land since it is easier to make an instant profit this way, rather than take the risk of building the project out.
Policy contradictions
Environmental regulations and Green Belt protections can limit development and the new Housing Minister needs to take an axe to this if he wants to improve the poor results to date.
Thatcher’day: for a much smaller population, we were building 300,000 per annum
Before the last Election, The Labour Party trotted out the usual ‘Jackson Pollocks’ that, come ‘hell or high water’ they were going to build 1.5million homes in the first electoral term.
Despite all these gaseous protestations, to date there will still be a shortfall of 33% on this target so far this year and if you project this forward to 2029, there will still be 500,000 homes not built under this pledge.
This is all the more discredit worthy when you think back to Thatcher’s day, when for a much smaller UK population, there was still a total of 300,000 new homes built per year.
Many toes will have to be trampled upon
I return to my initial premise which is ‘housing doesn’t just happen like the flow of a tap’, it needs to be relentlessly pursued with brutal determination encompassing fundamental grass root reform, to meet these targets.
Let’s face it, ‘many toes will have to be trampled upon’ and howls of ‘ecological nimbyism’ will need to be ignored if this is not just to be fanciful aspiration.
Swimming through sago pudding with a rucksack on your back
We wish you luck Mr. Reed, but as your predecessor found out to her certain cost, making forward progress through the corridors of bureaucracy on the housing issue, is akin to ‘swimming through sago pudding with a rucksack on your back’.
Are you up to this job Mr. Reed?
I fear echoes of the famous resignation speech in the Commons, delivered by Sir Geoffrey Howe, in November 1990: “It is rather like sending your opening batsman to the crease only for them to find that before the first ball is bowled, their bats have been broken by the team Captain.”
I rest my case.
