Policy outside London and £ 135,000 in London, and beginning to record and publish data in terms of the amount of people who can be housed, rather than the amount of houses themselves. Although less units may be built building larger units, larger homes can actually house more people when compared to smaller single bedroom properties.
The report also advocates for more involvement of those actually in need of homes in the planning process. Current evidence proposed to planning officers is considerably skewed in the direction of already-housed residents, and households on waiting lists or in temporary accommodation seldom have their voices heard.
Government spending
Although government finances are constrained, the current housing crisis is an urgent one that demands the maximum resources available to ensure the reduction of the consistently record-breaking homelessness figures. The Housing Forum details some of the ways that the government can use financial incentives and measures to ensure more people in the UK can access adequate housing, including a potential stamp duty holiday to encourage buyers and stimulate the market. Other measures include postponing the Building Safety Levy until 2028, councils should be given access to low-cost borrowing in order to facilitate housebuilding, and Local Housing Allowance should be re-adjusted to current market rents.
What can the sector do better?
Procurement emerges as the first area of improvement for the public housing sector. The Housing Forum note that procurement often drives up price rather than value for money, and that the public sector often ends up paying more for similar services than that of the private sector, citing a previous study that delves into how registered providers and local authorities can find ways to reduce procurement charges.
Standardisation in the design process is also a measure that can help facilitate economies of scale and bring down costs for housing expansion. This need not be such an aesthetic process that reduces the UK’ s housing expansion to rows and rows of identical homes, but rather standardisation of legal documents and less visible elements such as bathroom design that can help to optimise off-site construction and other methods that can speed up housebuilding.
Planning for the long-term
Long-term planning is critical to ensure that not just do the new homes provided have the most impact possible on the current crisis, but also circumnavigates similar circumstances arising in the future. Housing built today should be providing a home for someone for at least the next 100 years, and the government needs to lead work to build long-term solutions to long-term problems.
The report backs a 2024 study that called for“ a specialist Housing Delivery Unit to work across Whitehall to co-ordinate the delivery of housing working with and through all relevant government departments, agencies and all other appropriate bodies to set strategy, track progress, monitor delivery and directly tackle on the ground barriers to building.” Silver bullet solutions can often generate unnecessary consequences, and the creation of a specialist body could unlock better understanding of the cumulative effects of policy shifts.
The report also calls on the government to take advantage of the opportunities presented by new towns, invest in long-term and flexible funding, and a government review of the social housing rent levels to find fairer outcomes for residents and providers.
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