In his speech at conference last week, Ed Miliband once again placed housing at the centre of Labour’s general election campaign. He went further, making it a major plank of Labour’s long-term plan for Britain.
He stated that under Labour, Britain would build ‘as many houses as we need’. That’s a bold and important commitment. Britain has not built enough homes for a generation and it commits Labour to fundamentally changing our housing market. Nothing else will get us there.
Under this big headline, three things stood out.
First, Ed made home-ownership the rallying cry for more new homes. This is the right way forward. That is not because social housing is not desperately and increasingly needed: social and affordable housing must be at the heart of Labour’s plans. But, if housing is at the forefront of our election campaign, it needs to be on a theme that speaks to the majority: most people own their own homes and most who do not, want to. Any major programme of housebuilding needs to build homes of all tenures, types and price levels and unite the interests of those who own and want to own, with the many in desperate housing need.
Second, to the huge disappointment of many in local government and Labour’s housing campaigners, the party ruled out lifting the restrictions on councils building homes at scale. Critically for Ed’s pledge, it robs Labour of one of the tools that could fundamentally change the housing market and release significant levels of new investment. Councils collectively have the capacity to invest tens of billions of pounds in new housing and the next Labour government should be releasing it.
So, Labour’s approach to housing investment still needs clarification. Chris Leslie ruled out any additional borrowing to fund housing investment. Ed Balls had previously excluded housing from these strictures (and for good reason, see here), but last week took a tougher line. Ed Miliband for his part stated that he would make housing ‘the top priority for additional capital investment.’ Housing campaigners will take some comfort from this, but it remains to be seen what the level of investment will be.
Third, Labour pledged to create New Homes Corporations, modelled on the development corporation that successfully delivered the Olympics. Investment will never be enough on its own to change our housing system. Reform is needed and NHCs could be a big part of a new package. They could be the place where local government and the private sector work together to deliver the garden cities and suburbs Labour has promised. To genuinely deliver, NHCs will need some beefy powers: will they have planning powers to determine what is built where? Will they exercise compulsory purchase orders on key sites? In many cases new development will not be popular locally – will Labour impose new corporations?
Labour has made the right commitments on housing, but to deliver them we will need to show greater courage in reforming the system than we have so far on investment.
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Tony Clements is a former policy adviser on housing and is an editor of Red Brick. He tweets @tonyclements1
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