Panto season is upon us!
And as if by magic, up pops former Conservative Cllr for Hangleton and Knoll, Dawn Barnett, bemoaning the lack of affordable housing in many of the new developments in the city and the strain it will put on existing infrastructure.
Now, it would be tempting to remind former Cllr Barnett of the real causes of housing and infrastructure in our city, but that’s too much of an open goal, so let’s have a look at our current government and how it is ‘helping’ our city and its housing issues.
The Labour manifesto promised us 1,500,000 over five years nationally.
However, according to the latest available annual data, of the 63,743 ‘affordable’ homes completed in England in the financial year to March 2024, just 10,153 were for social rent – a subsidised arrangement for those on low incomes that is typically about 50% of market rate. The remainder were shared ownership, rent to buy and affordable rent (set at more like 80% of the local average).
To hit these targets, there is a massive issue in the building trade. According to Home Builders Federation, to reach the government’s target of 300,000 homes a year, the following roles will be needed across the housing sector: 20,000 bricklayers, 20,000 groundworkers, 8,000 carpenters, 3,200 plasterers, 2,400 plumbers, 2,400 electricians, 2,400 roofers and 1,200 tilers.
Not quite as catchy as the 12 days of Christmas, I’ll admit.
One of the many Brexit dividends was the loss of so many skilled tradespeople – I mean, have you tried to get builder recently?
Absolute hen’s teeth.
In 1988, 40% of all housing was built by SME (small medium sized enterprises), but that figure has fallen to under 10% currently.
As with so many woes this county suffers, the root cause can be traced back to Thatcher and the sale of all of our publicly owned services, which led to a catastrophic loss of apprentices.
Of course, it is very welcome news that locally the administration are building much-needed new homes, but the share of social housing must increase, and for any of this to be worthwhile in the long-term, the right to buy must end – else we’re just going to end up continuing to lose houses faster than we build or buy new ones.
The latest crisis in housing, however, is who actually owns them.
Now, I have my issues with landlordism – especially when 40% of the aforementioned houses lost under right to buy are now owned by private landlords, profiting off a basic human right when the rents could instead go back into public services – the big shift happening in our country right now, however, is far more sinister.
Rents have skyrocketed, outpacing the rate of wage growth, all while average property prices have gone from being 3.5 times the average wage in 1997, to well over eight times now, locking many young people out of buying their own homes.
With a growing captive market of people forced to pay over the odds for a basic need, it’s perhaps not a surprise that UK housing has gone high up on the list for the giant international investors like Blackstone & M&G.
These huge firms have spent billions of pounds buying up UK housing stock, entering the private rental sector 1000s of properties at a time.
Now, I obviously balk at the notion that markets somehow regulate themselves with ‘healthy competition’, but what happens when our housing starts shifting from being owned by a huge number of ‘competitors’ to just a few companies?
It’s not necessarily change we’re going to notice overnight, but it really should scare us that these giant investment firms – motivated solely by making profit – are positioning themselves to have greater control over the cost of one of our most basic human needs.
Not that this will be worrying our current government, of course, with the leader of the so-called ‘party of working people’ cosying up to these giant firms the second he took office.
In fact, it’s not just housing that they’re happy to see slip away into private hands, with the reintroduction of the disastrous Public Finance Initiative (PFI) scheme that has seen our council waste millions upon millions of pounds on interest alone over the past couple of decades.
Sorry, did I say PFI? I meant PPS (Public-Private Partnerships) which are obviously a totally different and new thing, despite having the same basic premise and locking public money into the same long-term, high-repayment contracts.
The boring rotation of status-quo-loving, centre-right politicians we’ve had in charge for decades will insist that private investment is the only way to raise the sorts of funds needed, but we know that’s not true.
There’s so much money in this country. Rather than tying yet another chain of 30-year debt around the necks of our public services, it’s time we brought in fair taxation for the top one per cent and invest that money in things that will benefit us all.
Steve Davis is Green Group Convenor and Leader of the Opposition
