Mark Bogard, the chief executive of the Family Building Society has called on the government to improve its housing policy and commented that in its current state it is not given the status it deserves.
A report commissioned by Family Building Society has been published today (June 5) by the London School of Economics which outlines steps that can be taken to create a more coherent and consistent approach to housing policy.
The report draws on the success and failures of previous government reviews into the housing sector and concludes that overall, the government’s housing policy today is not fit for purpose.
Two of the core reasons for this hinge on the fact that there are “too many decision makers” and that the right number of homes in the right locations are not being built.
“The greatest failure is not giving housing the status it deserves. The minister for housing should hold one of the great offices of state, alongside the Treasury, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the Home Office,” Boggard said at the launch of the report.
“It is shocking that the revolving ministerial door has witnessed 15 housing ministers, none a Secretary of State, come and go since 2010, which is bonkers,” he added.
The report also found that a large number of well-meaning initiatives are too heavily concentrated on demand rather than ensuring a stable long-term supply of housing.
This, coupled with macroeconomic instability means that as a result higher prices are often the outcome rather than more investment.
“Fifty odd years of stop-start housing initiatives, policies and reports have failed to deliver,” Boggard added.
“We need real leadership and a coherent, integrated, long-term housing policy. We need to align the key players, including the Bank of England, the Treasury and the Department of Work & Pensions as well as the Department of Levelling Up and Housing and local authorities to ensure government-wide commitment.”
Broken policies
In Boggard’s view, housing policy is currently “broken” and long-term housing policy must go beyond simply building more houses.
“It must be about the quality, use and of the whole stock, including support for landlords, and the circumstances of all households including reforming stamp duty which disincentivises moving,” he said.
The report looked back on previous reviews into housing policy to see what worked and what did not.
This included:
- two reviews undertaken by the departments then responsible for housing:
- the Housing Policy Review (1977)
- Fixing Our Broken Housing Market (2017);
- three reviews undertaken in the early 2000s by independent experts, commissioned variously by the Treasury and the department then responsible for housing:
- the Barker Review of Housing Supply (2004)
- the Barker Review of Land Use Planning (2006)
- the Miles Review of the UK Mortgage Market (2004);
- three non-governmental reviews set up to influence policymakers:
- one chaired by the Duke of Edinburgh (1985 and 1991);
- one set up by the Lloyds Banking Group (2015);
- the most recent one, set up by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. This reported in 2022 and asked not just what the government could do, but also what the Church of England should do.
All of these reviews called for a longer-term commitment to housing policy; for more coherent policy; and for governments to take a more strategic approach.
The LSE report authors noted that “in the main they did not succeed in generating the major direct impacts on housing policies that they intended”.
However, they did increase understanding and provide high quality analysis which influenced thinking and policy development over the longer term.
The LSE report authors also noted that a shift in attitudes to housing has hindered development in recent years.
“In earlier decades people viewed the provision of additional housing as highly desirable. Nowadays they are more likely to worry about how it will negatively impact on local services and their own housing conditions,” the report said.
Emeritus professor of housing economics at the LSE, Christine Whitehead, who wrote the report alongside Tony Crook from the University of Sheffield added: “Macroeconomic stability must always take precedence over everything else. But it is absolutely necessary that decision makers take notice of the consequences to housing and develop policies to make the sector more robust.”
The Family Building Society, launched in July 2014, is a trading name of National Counties Building Society and is currently the eleventh largest building society in the UK.
jane.matthews@ft.com
