House of Lords select committee reports are not always the most the riveting of reads. Friday’s, however, from the economic affairs committee was the exception to the rule.
“Building more homes” is a truly devastating assault on recent Whitehall orthodoxy regarding housebuilding, and reveals in great detail much of what has been going wrong. Many of the points contained in the report have been made before – but not often with the authority and heft of a cross-party parliamentary committee.
It is also brilliantly timed (more luck than judgement, one supposes) given that we have a new prime minister and a new communities & local government secretary. If Theresa May and Sajid Javid want to finally get to grips with the endemic undersupply of new homes, they would do well to start with this report.
Here are some of the highlights:
England needs 300,000 homes a year – not 200,000
The government’s commitment to building 1m homes by 2020 (equivalent to 200,000 a year) will not be enough to meet future demand and tackle the backlog after years of undersupply. “To meet that demand and have a moderating effect on house prices, at least 300,000 homes a year need to be built for the foreseeable future,” the committee says. “Otherwise the average age of a first time buyer will continue to rise.”
Note too that the government is nowhere near hitting even 200,000 a year. Completions last year were just 155,000, just over half what is now recommended.
The large housebuilders restrict output to optimise profits
Private developers alone have neither the ability nor the motivation to build all of the homes we need. The housebuilding market is “oligopolistic”: its business model is to restrict the volume of housebuilding in order to maximise profits.
The government’s reliance on the private sector to meet its housebuilding targets is therefore misguided. “To achieve its target the government must recognise the inability of the private sector, as it is currently incentivised, to build the number of homes needed,” the peers say.
Land hoarding should be penalised to stimulate quicker building
There is also too big a gap between the number of planning permissions granted and the number of homes which are built. Councils should therefore be given the power to tax developments that are not completed within an agreed timeframe.
“We recommend that local authorities are granted the power to levy council tax on developments that are not completed within a set time period,” the report argues. “This time period should be negotiated when planning consent is sought and be varied according to the size and complexity of a development.”
Local authorities should be allowed to borrow build social housing
The government is too fixated on home ownership at the expense of other tenures, and the current cap on council borrowing to invest in social housebuilding is “arbitrary” and should be scrapped.
The committee points to the government’s recent abandonment of its target to achieve a fiscal surplus in 2019-20 and the current low cost of borrowing. “There is no set limit on the amount a local authority can borrow to build a swimming pool,” it notes. “The same should apply to housing.”
Councils should also be encouraged to enter partnerships with housing associations, whose efforts to build more homes have been undermined by reductions in social rents.
Public land is not being released quickly enough
There is surplus public sector land enough in London for at least 130,000 homes – across England there could be enough for 2m. But the government’s efforts to release this for residential development have so far been “ineffective”.
The report recommends that a senior Cabinet minister should be put in charge of this process in future, and the National Infrastructure Commission given responsibility for keeping tabs on the number of homes that are actually built on it. Importantly, the requirement to achieve the best possible market price – often the cause of delay – should be “relaxed”, the committee says.
How likely is the government to adopt any of these ideas? On Monday, in her last speech before becoming prime minister, Theresa May spoke of the need to do “far more” to build more homes, which sounds like she may be amenable to a change of strategy. It is not difficult to imagine her getting much more tough on the release of public sector land. And there have been hints already that the new chancellor, Philip Hammond, might be prepared to borrow to invest in infrastructure.
The biggest challenge will come from the major housebuilders, and their many hangers on in the housing and planning industry, who will fiercely resist any effort to make them build faster than they are already. There are many interests vested in the status quo. Whether they are overcome may depend, in the end, on Mrs May’s level of determination.
Daniel Bentley is editorial director of the think tank Civitas and the author of “The Housing Question: Overcoming the shortage of homes”. He tweets @danielbentley
