The Government is moving (slowly) in the right direction on housing

I’m not very political and over the last few elections have flipped between who I vote for, focusing on the promise and past delivery. The Conservative government is pushing forward a radical policy agenda - nowhere more so, perhaps, than in housing and to me it is good to see that high on the agenda is home ownership (via various initiatives), holding housing associations more to account and getting rid of initiatives that added nothing. Everyone know about the right to buy policy but changes to zero carbon and removal of the housing association’s rent settlement were post-election surprises.

A recent PwC report showed that home ownership is going backwards as we enter generation rent (available PwC Generation Rent report) and is at its lowest level for a number of years – though people still desire to own their own home.

The Conservative manifesto pledge was to build 200,000 starter homes, sold to first-time buyers at a 20% discount to the market rate. The original thoughts around this was that the homes would be built on former industrial sites and surplus public land however this now appears to be a requirement heading for all “reasonably sized” sites, effectively the new “affordable housing” obligation on private developers. The details will be included in the Housing Bill, so let’s wait and see but sounds like a U-turn to me.

Housing associations are rightly concerned about right to buy. The track record for delivering more housing stock is low and if you increase purchases this will dwindle the stock altogether. An even worse problem and although statistics show the waiting lines for social housing is falling, that’s simply because people have been told they stand no chance and therefore removed from the list.

The push and drive of the Government has helped, don’t get me wrong, with the builders’ finance fund for example which has been designed to restart developments of between 5 and 250 units. Its main objectives is to help smaller developers and is open for draw down up to 31 March 2017 – get in while you can.


We cannot forget that housebuilding was at its lowest in a significantly long time and with initiatives such as Help to Buy and the reforms to the planning system under the National Planning Policy Framework, the housing market has returned. There is work still to do to increase supply to satisfy demand but one step at a time ey! You need more homes built for people who need them in places they need them. Is that too much to ask!

Feel free to contact me 0113 288 2276 or lee.a.wilkinson@uk.pwc.com if you wish to discuss this blog or anything relevant to property and construction.

Enjoy the weekend

Lee