It’s about housing, stupid

The Party Conference season has finally come to an end, and our SEC Newgate UK team are taking a breather and looking back. What emerged was the clear focus across all parties on housing as a key issue. Now you may expect us to say this, given advising the housing sector is our bread and butter, but this year it really did ring true. Here’s a run down of what the parties had to say about one of the most resonant issues in UK politics right now.

Labour

Andy Burnham summarised at his Labour Conference speech why every party has placed housing as its cornerstone: “I have said from my first day in this job that everything starts with a good home”. For Burnham’s Labour, the 1.5 million homes slogan has admittedly faded, what replaced it at conference has been a greater emphasis on increasing social housing and the introduction of a new demand-side intervention welcomed by housebuilders – the My First Home programme. 

Angela Rayner’s speech celebrated the work already done to overhaul the planning system and introduced new powers to increase public control over housing, including powers for councils to acquire long-term empty properties and to have further influence over poor quality private rental stock. Right to buy will no longer apply to new build council homes and building will be supported on unused public land. Not to miss leaseholders out, a Bill on Leasehold Reform will be introduced by Christmas and legislation will make an independent regulator of property management agents.

Reform UK

The conference season began with Reform UK, small in parliament but mighty in the opinion polls and a growing power in local government. Reform UK did something unusual for their flagship planning policy announcement: they invited industry responses to their “Planning Teal Paper” until the end of the year. Policies being “consulted on” include scrapping all spatial development strategies (including London), shortening the life of local plans to five years and a raft of incentives for brownfield schemes including removing the affordable housing requirement (lowering it to 5% in London and some major cities), removing Community Infrastructure Levy and Section 106 payments, removing Biodiversity Net Gain requirements and a list of similar tax incentives for brownfield sites on Capital Gains Tax, Stamp Duty and rental income. His pledge on delivering 50,000 social homes every year for the next 10 years doubled down on ensuring the system “is not abused and goes to the most deserving claimants.”

Conservatives 

The Conservative team came out on the housing offensive in Birmingham last week with a very clear focus to speed up the delivery of new homes through a combination of less tax and less regulation. A trio of housing relevant speakers included Andrew Griffith MP (Shadow Chancellor), Katie Lam MP (Shadow MHCLG) and Victoria Atkins MP (Shadow Defra) and they promised to abolish Natural England and the Environment Agency while scrapping the Future Homes Standard and merging CIL and section 106 into one new simpler and lower infrastructure levy. Collectively, they claim this would save up to £50,000 off the cost of a new home.

At a macro level, the promise to scrap stamp duty was repeated, this time joined by a pledge to scrap the mansion tax and to amend inheritance tax to remove the family home from any tax liability. Other policies included "fundamental reimagination" of the planning system.

The fringe was busy with housing discussions and both the development sector and the various trade bodies were well-represented.

Green 

Housing policy was a dominant domestic policy focus at the Green Party Conference, with two pillars: more council housing and private rent controls. Polanski's main new announcement, aimed squarely at his Camden audience, was a three-year rent freeze followed by a national fair rent guarantee. He also called for an end to leasehold and for stronger building safety and attacked the "powerful vested interests of developers and big landlords".

A packed fringe panel on the financialisation of housing set out the case for rent control, with speakers from Austria, Ireland and the New Economics Foundation normalising it as a valid economic policy. Discussing a more European model of long-term private renting notably sits at odds with the "abolish private landlords" motion passed last year. Council housing was the other focus. Sian Berry MP led a discussion on expanding "buy the supply" to deliver council homes, with consensus that it delivers the fastest impact and that the crisis is one of lacking affordable housing rather than general supply. The Greens' new London council leaders agreed with this approach and were sceptical of the current cross-subsidy model for council housebuilding.

Liberal Democrat

Fringe discussions focused heavily on housing delivery, social housing, planning reform and the infrastructure needed to support growth. Much of the debate centred on how government can increase housing supply while ensuring developments have local support and are accompanied by investments in transport, energy and public services. Housing was frequently discussed as both a social challenge and an economic growth issue.