In his latest article for Society Matters magazine, Robin Fieth outlines a number of ideas aimed at encouraging innovation and challenging the status quo of house building. 

300,000+ new homes a year sound familiar?  1.5 million homes over the period of a five-year parliament?  Another target with an accompanying hockey-stick chart showing a disproportionate expectation of volume delivery in years four and five?

Equally familiar are the doom-mongers and fatalists calling out failure before the Government has really started.  Let’s be clear, I am not out to defend the Government.  They should be quite capable of doing that themselves. While the changes to planning outlined in the National Planning Policy Framework display a real determination to change the complex, often slow-moving process, its success will only be apparent in the ensuing months and years.

But I do want to ask the question,  “how”?  

And I want to consider the how, and what are the mutual and co-operative solutions to these challenges?

So here are some ideas.  Some more, some less mutual.  In case they are seen as too controversial, perhaps I should that these are my personal views and not necessarily those of the BSA!

1. The Government should not rely on private sector developers.  They will build only as many homes as will maximise returns for their shareholders.  Instead, Government and local authorities should contract directly with construction companies to build the additional homes that are needed in communities up and down the country.  These are likely to be heavily focused on social housing.
2. Housing associations, co-operative housing schemes and community land trusts should all be encouraged and enabled to play a major role in achieving the volumes required.  Pension schemes could provide much of the finance, rental income streams being a good match for pension liabilities.
3. Homes England, local authorities and other public landowners should change their approach to development land.  To achieve true affordability, land should be retained in public or community ownership for mixed developments of social and owner-occupied homes.  The homes built for sale should be sold on a suitable mark-up to cost of construction, with restrictive covenants to ensure that subsequent vendors do not benefit from uplifts in underlying land value.  The proceeds from the first sale of these homes could be used to help fund social housing.
4. Emphasis should be placed on re-purposing existing buildings, subject to rigorously enforced high quality building regs - converting redundant retail, office and industrial space to decent homes, rejuvenating communities.
5. Government should actively encourage and facilitate the whole range of construction methods from conventional brick and block to modular and factory built.  Local authorities should showcase developments of high-quality affordable homes built using alternative methods.

Much will depend on effective planning reform and the pace at which local authority planning teams can be brought up to strength.

There is plenty of evidence that community led planning processes can remove many of the objections – local plans that are respected, not over-ridden by the first major developer-led application.  I would go further and require large developers to provide full security up front for their Section 106 commitments – and penalise heavily those that subsequently seek to re-negotiate or renege.

On local authority planning teams, if ever there were a case for accelerated apprenticeship programmes, executive education type schemes and boot camps.  The “whatever it takes” approach seems entirely appropriate.

Finally, the role of building societies and credit unions?  To provide the wide range and depth of mortgage lending on all of those different types of new homes built for owner occupation, including developing new and improved products.  Perhaps we should start by focusing on how we could radically reform shared ownership to become genuinely progressive ownership mortgages?

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