Cabinet’s reshuffle is our gain

COMMENT: For us nerds, government reshuffles are great spectator sport. And this past Wednesday’s certainly did not disappoint. What to make of Michael Gove being appointed to secretary of state for MHCLG? The phone lines of the chatterati were ablaze! Who saw that coming, then? Just why did Mr Gove accept what is, technically, a demotion? And seemingly with alacrity. We’ll never know. So I’ll run with this: he needed a new challenge. After all, rumours have been flying around Whitehall to the effect that “Gove is bored” for months. And MHCLG is nothing if not a challenge. Well, whatever the reason(s), it is our gain. Whether or not you agree with his politics, you are looking at serious governmental competence and an intellectual powerhouse. Leave to one side his, er, complicated relationship with the prime minister – Michael Gove is the sole survivor from the 2010 Cabinet, and has 11 years of experience working at the highest level of government. He has a track record of turning around beleaguered government departments – many of which he’s led, of course – the shining example being his timely turbo-charging of DEFRA. He is Mr Fixer. In short: we need him. Then, on Thursday we get the icing on the cake: Neil O’Brien is also to go into Marsham Street as part of the ministerial team. So now, possibly the two biggest thinkers in the current government are running the ministry which most concerns the property industry. Great news for us, and great news for the levelling-up agenda – which we all support, even if we have no idea what it is – to finally get purchase, after a faltering start. So what about Mr Gove’s priorities? Four obvious buckets: planning, building safety, housing – and levelling up.  Let’s take each in turn. First, planning. After weeks of speculation, and as wholly anticipated, the benighted planning reform proposals were immediately and irrevocably pulled. A powerful initial signal. The interesting thing will be whether there’s a return to addressing planning any time soon, as is widely assumed, or if things are left to settle. Nobody is arguing that we don’t need planning reform, but it will take some time, and some serious thought, to do it properly. And it will not be lost on Mr Gove that the planning system has no bearing on actual housing numbers. If I were them, I’d leave it alone for a couple of years. Second, building safety. This is one that can’t be shelved. The secretary of state will have to give this his urgent attention; it needs a proper fix, and it needs it super quick. Simple as that. Third, housing. The housing crisis has always been with us. But new-build completion numbers are actually quite good right now.  Interesting that Christopher Pincher is still in post as part of the MHCLG ministerial team; if he is left with the housing brief, then I think we can take it that it will be business pretty much as usual. Having said that, the broken housing market does need some radical initiatives to plug the affordability gap in the market, and soon. Interestingly, Mr Gove is not as ideologically obsessed with home ownership as his predecessor, who slavishly toed the party line. But it is levelling up, of course, which will be the focus of all Michael Gove’s mastery of commanding the machinery of state. The signs are clear: just when you thought the acronym couldn’t get any worse, we have the gesture politics of renaming MHCLG to be the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (cue howl of outrage from local government). Somewhat more substantively, I would point you to Mr Gove’s Ditchley lecture (July 2020) for the direction of travel. But the clearest signal – the QED – is the appointment of Andy Haldane, at permanent secretary grade, to run the levelling up task force – albeit, confusingly, within Cabinet office. This could present major opportunities for us. Never mind the hitherto vacuous narrative around levelling up, its most glaring omission was that of private sector involvement. With the signal appointment of Mr Haldane, it looks as if this is about to change.  The two Peters of Homes England, Peter Freeman and Peter Denton, will also have a huge part to play, being nothing if not market-facing. The property industry could now find a way to meaningfully populate the levelling up agenda, by being facilitated to bring forward projects in key localities. Pundits are saying his massive brief (he, also has the union) is the prime minister keeping Gove “out of mischief”. But turn it on its head: is it No. 10 taking an almighty risk? After all, it could provide a very powerful platform for one of the PM’s (slightly younger) rivals. Ours is not to reason why. The hope emerges that we’ll see DLUHC morph into a new, repurposed and empowered machine, bringing the whole of Whitehall to bear, in a veritable engine for promoting economic growth. And needless to say, if that is what’s on offer, then we must do all we can to make it work. My reading of the appointment of Messrs Gove, O’Brien, Haldane et al, is that this is wholly positive for our industry. Game on. Jackie Sadek is former policy advisor to CLG and now chief operating officer of UKR. She is co-author of Broken Homes, with Peter Bill, about the housing crisis.