Labour needs to build, build, build – and listen

COMMENT So on to 2024. And a more-than-likely change in government this year. Who’s ready then? According to the tabloids over Christmas (not that I was bored or anything), His Majesty’s Opposition will be seeking to nail down its manifesto, if only in outline, by mid-February. The property industry is right to be rather encouraged by the “build, build, build” mantra consistently signalled by the Labour Party, even if the more churlish among us are looking for a bit of detail. And the challenge of delivering more homes is never ending. What we know so far of the components of Labour policy – such as increasing social homes, a return to new settlement development (new towns) and a renewed commitment to urban regeneration – must certainly be welcomed as the right direction of travel. They probably don’t go anywhere near far enough: I believe we won’t see a step change in tackling the housing crisis until we get a return to wholesale council housing – Peter Bill and I have written extensively on this. But we also understand the political reticence to commit to such a bold policy against the relentless backdrop of 24-hour attack-dog news cycles. It is smacks of “big government” and is scary. What’s the plan? So back to the currently stated – more modest – objectives from Labour. Even these are going to be hard enough to achieve in a dilapidated delivery landscape. Just how do you deliver new settlements at scale? Local government has been hollowed out. There is a drastic shortage of planners and property professionals at all levels, in both the private and the public sector. And the government’s housing agency, Homes England, has been severely constrained. It’s tragic really. This delivery challenge is exemplified by the relentlessly woeful performance of the bidding rounds for the Towns Fund, Levelling-Up Fund, and so on and so forth: projects are continually announced, but then typically delayed, and almost inevitably fail to deliver to profile. It is gimmicky and exhausting. It exemplifies a failure to properly test deliverability at the outset. And why technical capabilities are so important when bringing forward difficult schemes. Labour’s policy ambitions are only achievable if it openly recognises the delivery deficit. And acts quickly to rectify that. So then, what to do in the first 100 days of a new government, to establish a platform for Homes England to get out and deliver? First, learn from the successes of the past. We’ve got more than 60 years of experience delivering new towns and 40-plus years doing major regeneration. The Labour government’s Housing and Regeneration Act (2008) brought together the powers of the old Urban Regeneration Companies, Commission for New Towns and Housing Corporation in one place (the Homes and Communities Agency – or HCA) to do much greater delivery at scale. I was there. We were cheering. In establishing the HCA, the Labour government set up a body to explicitly deliver more social housing, new towns and major urban regeneration. Labour would do well to remind itself of why it did this and go back to first principles. The HCA later morphed into Homes England and remains the government’s designated housing agency. The Labour Party should empower and unfetter Homes England to return to its roots. Reboot it as the housing and regeneration agency working in partnership with ambitious places to deliver ambitious projects. Homes England needs to use its pool of planners, surveyors and property professionals to accelerate new housing and regenerated communities again. Secondly, we need a national housing and regeneration skills strategy, that takes a long-term view, to increase the number of planners, surveyors and so on, so that delivery deficits do not occur again, and to increase the overall diversity of the property community. This should not be subject to a turf war in Whitehall, so Homes England should oversee this, with extra resourcing so to do. It goes without saying – so I had better say it – this work needs to be undertaken alongside a similar national construction skills strategy. Thirdly, we need to end the nonsense of centralisation via competitive bidding rounds that sees officials in Whitehall signing off nonsense, such as park benches and chess-board installations – open to accusations of pork-barrel politics – and instead recognise that delivery happens “in place” by technically capable professionals. Concentrate on the big picture. A good start And that would only be a start. But it would be a good start. A message to Sir Keir Starmer, and to Ms Rachel Reeves and Ms Angela Rayner: let us help. Nobody could argue with “build, build, build” but you’re going to need a proper implementation plan for ramping up supply – and not a load of lazy platitudes about planning reform. Our business is your business. Remember your own 2008 Act. Listen to experts who have a track record of delivery. We’ve done this before. And we can do it again. Jackie Sadek is director of Rural & Urban Strategic and former government adviser. She is co-author, with Peter Bill, of Broken Homes. Britain’s Housing Crisis: Faults, Factoids and Fixes. Sadek is chair of the EG public sector forum.