The Party Manifestos – A Missed Opportunity for Housing?

One thing is clear: housing and planning will not be at the top of the Prime Minister’s in tray come 9 June. Brexit is set to devour civil service and governmental resources as the withdrawal negotiations begin in earnest: Brexit will eclipse domestic policy for years to come.

Ordinarily, the housing crisis would dominate the government’s agenda. It is something that impacts on almost everyone in the country and is only set to get worse if real action isn’t taken now. The fact that we need to deliver around 250,000 homes a year – and consistently fail to do so – is a consensus across the political divide.

Although housing will not be at the top of the pile, the manifestos unveiled last week shine a light on where the debate currently stands. In short, the prospect of a radical shake up in the next parliament looks very unlikely (Green Belt reform, for instance, has fallen so far off the map it doesn’t get a look in). However, it remains the case that the manifestos represent the first time since the White Paper in February 2017 that housing has received meaningful attention. What are the key take-away points?

Conservatives

• 1 million new homes by 2020 (in keeping with the 2015 manifesto) and a further 500,000 by 2022. The Green Belt, National Parks and Areas of Outstanding National Beauty will be maintained
• Support for high-quality design and placemaking – including infrastructure, parks and high-quality, high-density housing
• Provide greater flexibility to housing associations and introduce a new generation of fixed-term council housing linked to a new Right to Buy

Labour

• Invest to build over a million new homes, including 100,000 council and affordable homes. This will be delivered by a new Department for Housing
• Brownfield sites will be prioritised and the Green Belt protected
• Labour will back first-time buyers, including ‘first dibs’ for local people buying their first home, and improve standards for private renters – including rent controls and landlord licensing

Liberal Democrats

• Deliver 300,000 new homes per year by 2022. A government commissioning programme will build homes for rent and sale. Borrowing caps will be lifted for councils and housing associations to spur new council and affordable homes
• Deliver at least 10 new garden cities in England
• Penalise excessive land banking by developers who have failed to build after 3 years, and introduce a community right of appeal where planning decisions go against an approved Local Plan

While there is nothing Earth-shattering within the manifestos, it could be that the real opportunity for housing reform lies outside Westminster. We have some very interesting new figures at the helm of local government. Andy Burnham (Manchester), Andy Street (West Midlands), Steve Rotheram (Liverpool) and others (let’s not forget Sadiq Khan) all have the chance – to a greater or lesser degree – to shape the agenda in their regions.

While the government focuses on Brexit, we can only hope that the new municipal heavyweights start to address one of the other great issues of our time. Westminster shouldn’t be the only place that built environment professionals pay attention to after the general election dust has settled.