Broken Homes

Peter Bill

Description

There is 'no place like home' sighs Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. A sentiment with heightened meaning in Britain 2020. There is no book like Broken Homes either. Britain's housing crisis is subject to caustic analysis from a journalist who used to work for a house builder, blended with the mordantly funny experiences of a senior government advisor now trying had to become a housebuilder. Broken Homes exposes the short-term, haphazard and partisan development of housing policy. How political misadventures have led to the housing crisis Britain faces today. Former Conservative and Labour housing ministers interviewed freely admit to a dysfunctional system presiding over ill-formed plans mainly pushed by partisan lobby groups. Broken Homes exposes the disregard by planners, designers and builders for those who occupy new homes. A world where homes are crammed to meet targets, where occupants are forced to fit rather than form the mould. Where the desire for decent-sized homes is being thwarted by rules encouraging matchbox estates. A world in which the role of a home changed forever in 2020 but where space standards are no higher than 100 years ago Broken Homes explodes the fallacy that building more homes will bring down prices. Or that improving the planning system will somehow make a difference. Instead, decent-sized decently-spaced homes must be demanded for a new generation of New Towns, and that Government must also face the fact they need to subsidise a major programme to build homes for those who will never be able to pay more than half the market rent.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 03 novembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800467606
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © Peter Bill & Jackie Sadek

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 9781800467606

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For
Anna, Emilia and Elsa
&
Alfred and Theodore
‘Our broken housing market is one of the greatest barriers to progress in Britain today. Whether buying or renting, the fact is that housing is increasingly unaffordable – particularly for ordinary working-class people who are struggling to get by.’
Theresa May, Prime Minister
Fixing our broken housing market, February ’17

‘Over the years, the response from politicians has been piecemeal. Well-intentioned initiatives have built more homes here and there but have skirted around the edges of a growing problem. That has to change. We need radical, lasting reform.’
Sajid Javid, Housing Secretary
Fixing our broken housing market, February ’17

‘Not more fiddling around the edges, not simply painting over the damp patches, but levelling the foundations and building, from the ground up, a whole new planning system for England.’
Boris Johnson, Prime Minister
Planning for the Future, August 2020

‘These proposals will help build the homes our country needs, bridge the generational divide and recreate an ownership society in which more people have the dignity and security of a home of their own.’
Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State for Housing
Planning for the Future, August 2020

‘How the government seeks to reach collective agreement on these things can be completely dysfunctional.’
Gavin Barwell, Housing Minister 2016/17
Chapter Three, Faults and Factoids

‘I fundamentally believe we have answers to the country’s housing crisis and the government does not.’
John Healey, former Shadow Housing Secretary
Chapter Three, Faults and Factoids
INTRODUCTION
Peter Bill
When Jackie remarked that she wanted to write a book on the broken housing market, and I agreed to help, the first thing she said was ‘we mustn’t fall out’. It is not possible to fall out with a woman of such warmth, energy and fun. I had thought that my 2014 book Planet Property , about the commercial real estate sector, would be my last. But the chance to examine the malfunctioning machine that supplies new homes, both private and public, in such spirited company was irresistible. Having spent a decade at what was plain George Wimpey, followed by a decade at Building magazine, then another at Estates Gazette , I felt I had an ancient but working knowledge of the sector, and had learned the trick of finding things out and writing them down.
Fixes for the planning system have been largely avoided in Broken Homes . The idea that repairing the pipework will produce more water is a conceit best left to those mistaken enough to think it will alter the laws of supply and demand. But the attempt by the government in August 2020 to at least try and increase the supply of land via proposals in the ‘Planning for the Future’ white paper deserves inclusion.
What has not had attention before is the disregard of planners, designers and builders for those who buy or rent new homes. A world where homes are crammed to meet targets, where occupants are forced to fit, rather than form, the mould. Where the desire for decent-sized homes is being thwarted by rules that encourage matchbox estates. A world in which the role of a home changed forever in the 2020 pandemic, but where space standards are no higher than 100 years ago.
Nor has the short-term, haphazard and partisan development of housing policy by government been exposed before. How political misadventures have led to the housing crisis Britain faces today. Former Conservative and Labour housing ministers interviewed for Broken Homes freely admit to a dysfunctional system presiding over ill-formed plans mainly pushed by partisan lobby groups.
The fallacy that building more homes will bring down prices has remained unchallenged until now. As has the ‘factoid’ that the crisis is the fault of planners or housebuilders. Or that improving the planning system will make any difference. Instead, decent-sized decently spaced homes can be demanded by government, which must also face the fact that they need to subsidise a major programme to build homes for those who will never be able to pay more than half the market rent.
There is, of course, no one ‘silver bullet’ to solve the housing crisis. Jackie Sadek fires her shots at the end of Chapter Ten. Raise minimum space standards. Lower maximum density levels. Make both mandatory. Put people first not land values, even if it is just in a new generation of new towns. Accept Oliver Letwin’s proposal to change the 1961 Land Compensation Act to put a ceiling of ten times existing use value on brownfield and farmland granted permission for homes. Finally, accept the idea that only a mass building programme which delivers homes rented in perpetuity at half market rents is the only way to alleviate the plight of those that will never get to step on the housing ladder and buy.
Broken Homes was completed in August 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic continued. The prime minister, Boris Johnson, was urging the country to ‘build, build, build’ ahead of introducing ‘Planning for the Future’ a plan based on the mistaken assumption that changing the planning system would bring 300,000 new homes a year. ‘Not more fiddling around the edges, not simply painting over the damp patches, but levelling the foundations and building, from the ground up, a whole new planning system for England.’ The execution of these ideas will play out over the next five to ten years.
PB
Jackie Sadek
In February 2016, I took a super difficult decision. As a result, I handed in my notice to Greg Clark, then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, to return to run the company I had helped found in 2010 – UKR Regeneration. It was difficult because working in Greg’s private office, on his brilliant devolution and local growth agenda, was the best job I had ever had. But I was becoming increasingly drawn towards the housing crisis.
I was beginning to feel that it was wholly untenable to continue to expend my (increasingly in shorter supply) energies on running around the country, telling people what to do from Whitehall. I felt that the only way I could genuinely help sort the housing crisis – and, for good measure, whilst we were there, all the other ills of the mainly dismal modern built environment scene – was to get back out there and demonstrate exactly how to do it. Show them what good looks like. I wanted to stop talking about it and start doing it. I do apologise for the hubris.
So, I left the civil service after three very rewarding years and I returned to my company, UKR. To bastardise the famous quote from Mrs Patrick Campbell, it was like leaving the deep peace of the marriage bed to return to the hurly-burly of the chaise longue. The story of UKR (roughly a game of two halves) is captured in Chapter Eight. As we relate, breaking into property development is seriously hard. It’s been a long old haul to get to here and, at the time of writing, whilst we may have reached the tipping point, we still haven’t put a spade in the ground on our Biggleswade site.
In July 2019, my old friend, venerable journalist Peter Bill (who has held my hand throughout this ten-year journey), took me for lunch at the Reform Club – as one does! We reprised our regular hand-wringing conversation about the housing crisis. And I told him that I wanted to capture the UKR story, as a worked example of how it has come about. By that stage, I had succeeded in getting an outline planning permission for 1,500 homes, but it had been a very painful trajectory. There and then we hatched the idea for Broken Homes. The result is this book, full of clever analysis about the housing crisis – for which I can take not a lot of credit; it is mostly the work of my learned co-author. We were fortunate to be able to mine Peter’s invaluable archive of his columns in the Evening Standard and Estates Gazette , as well as in Planning and Property Week , together with his work for the Smith Institute think tank – not to mention his formidable memory. We were fortunate in being able to interview a lot of leading thinkers in the housing industry. But underpinning all of this work, Broken Homes is informed throughout – factually and emotionally – by the UKR story and the sheer reality of how bloody hard it is to do anything out there. Bailey Park is, but of course, a thinly disguised proxy for the leafy villages that UKR proposes for the east of Biggleswade. The greatest (and most under-sung) hero of this tale is the magical and mystical Jason Blain, the visionary co-founder of UKR; if UKR succeeds in our mission it will be entirely down to his unswerving belief and stamina.
A mutual friend once described Peter and me as ‘the Odd Couple’. Guilty as cha