English housing policy has one objective: build more. The country needs extra, and better, housing. Right? On the surface, it might seem an obvious objective. But where? And should better housing always mean more homes, rather than renewed homes and revitalised communities?
Currently, the government’s strategy is largely focused on areas facing what its housing agency calls “affordability pressures”. The rationale appears simple: build more, and assuredly house prices will fall. That neatly ignores the fact that its heavily criticised “help-to-buy” scheme, offering subsidised loans of up to 20% of a property price (40% in London) has pushed up prices further and boosted the profits of the big house-builders. More contentiously, though, the strategy of Homes England skews funding overwhelmingly towards the south-east – and away from other towns, cities and once-thriving industrial communities, largely in the north.
In short, England’s housing strategy is so partial it hardly passes for a policy, still less a plan to address whole swathes of the country. After 62 of the 73 local authority areas of the north voted to leave the EU three years ago, Theresa May promised a radical agenda in which “no community is left behind.” Yet what has emerged, in housing, is an unequal funding formula.
Carol Matthews, chair of Homes for the North (representing 17 large housing associations), lamented at a weekend conference in Newcastle upon Tyne that large chunks of the north and the Midlands are not eligible for 80% of Homes England funding – further exacerbating the north-south divide, and leaving more northern towns behind while “increasing demand and pressure in southern regions”. This makes them, according to one delegate, not left behind, but “kept behind”. In other words, as a matter of policy, help for such places had been withdrawn, deliberately, or otherwise.
With national and local government hollowed out after nine years of austerity – and the abolition of regional development agencies, government regional offices and the effective scrapping of a national regeneration agency – it was heartening to be reminded at the conference, organised by the Town and Country Planning Association, that local endeavour can work wonders. Inspiring stories from two small Northumberland towns – Wooler and Amble – caught the imagination. A community trust in the former has assets of almost £3m, owns high street shops, has delivered 18 affordable homes, and runs a large community hub incorporating a library and much more. Similarly, another trust in Amble, once a coal port, has bought and renewed shops, created a new town square, and built a “harbour village” with a variety of shops and cafes. People – yes, from the south – have moved in.
Until 2010, places like Wooler and Amble could count on the support of (now abolished) regional bodies. Northumberland, for instance, had a strategic partnership, funded by the county council and the local regional development agency. A dilapidated pier in Amble was rebuilt 20 years ago by the (then) national regeneration agency, English Partnerships.
About time, then, for a government policy reappraisal to make renewal in our kept-behind towns, cities and communities as important as new house-building.