Letter: Perhaps The Establishment Housing Policy Facade Is Crumbling

Published on: 5 Aug, 2017
Updated on: 5 Aug, 2017

From Jenny Procter

Some 37% of Tory money comes directly from national house builders according to Channel 4’s Dispatches) and the fortunes of these companies have been soaring. So it does not take too much imagination to see where the push for development on lucrative green belt sites is coming from.

Philip Hammond himself is said to have made his fortune through property development and many others in politics have significant property interests.

Moreover it has become patently obvious over the last 30 years that house builders have failed to be an effective delivery vehicle for affordable housing and always seem to manage to make a reduction in promised supply through so called “viability” assessments (the conveniently flexible device for making more homes less affordable in order to feed profit).

The delivery of social housing itself has declined dramatically because councils are no longer the supplier that they once were and the fatal mistake of “right to buy” has removed two million desperately needed social homes from the public sector stock since 1980.

Guildford Borough Council (GBC) is an unfortunate example of this situation. Post the unexpected result of the general election, and the Grenfell Tower disaster, news reporting seems to be more focused on highlighting the lack of investment in social and affordable housing.

Perhaps the facade is crumbling. In any event, with the public sector overall apparently becoming less and less able to cope, the poorly directed emphasis on economic growth at all costs could just be the next bubble to burst.

GBC’s lamentable performance in delivering a mere 65 social homes in the last two years speaks for itself. The real crisis in housing with which society is faced is one of pricing and distribution. This is particularly true in London and the South-East.