Britain needs practical ideas to fix the housing crisis
Prosper UK is bringing together a group of experts with a proven track record of delivery to try to solve the housing crisis, says Gavin Barwell
If you were making a list of long-standing public policy failures in this country, housing would be right near the top. We haven’t built enough homes for at least 40 years.
That failure has had many consequences. In the run-up to the last election, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves rightly identified that getting Britain building again is key to addressing our anaemic levels of growth (though they have thus far failed to do much about it). High housing costs disincentivise people from moving elsewhere for work, leading to a less flexible labour market. The lack of homes to rent is behind the rising bill local councils are paying for temporary accommodation, which is putting local government under such financial strain.
The number of people sleeping rough on our streets is the most visible manifestation of the crisis. But it is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg – as I am acutely aware as the father of three sons, it is all but impossible for young people to get on the housing ladder in many parts of the country without help from the Bank of Mum & Dad (or the Bank of Grandma & Grandad). Together with the rip-off of plan 2 student loans, that is giving rise to a deep and justified sense of inter-generational unfairness.
My boss Sajid Javid and I tried to address this crisis during our time together at the department of communities and local government in 2016 and 2017. The White Paper we published, Fixing our Broken Housing Market, was widely welcomed by the industry. But for a variety of reasons – some understandable (the Grenfell tragedy, which diverted attention from building new homes to the safety of many of our existing homes and the Covid pandemic), others less so (the opposition of some of Boris Johnson’s backbenchers to housebuilding in their constituencies) – it was never fully implemented. Things have only got worse since then.
That’s why Prosper UK is launching a commission to identify solutions to the crisis. We have brought together a group of experts from housebuilders big and small, housing associations, built environment consultancies and law firms – people who know the industry inside out and have a proven record of delivery.
Building consensus
The last thing we need is the same old sterile political debates about housing (whether we should build more homes for sale or for rent, whether the planning system is to blame or the housebuilders etc). What we need are practical ideas for a government that is serious about solving this crisis to get on and implement – and honesty with voters that this problem so long in the making can’t be solved overnight.
And, we need to build some consensus in Westminster and beyond about those ideas. If I have learned one thing since I left politics, it is that businesses want stability and commitment from government. One CEO once said to me that he would prefer that the government stuck with a bad policy for five years rather than changed it four times to end up with a perfect one. If we want people to invest in housing and regeneration in an increasingly uncertain world, we need to give them as much certainty as possible and in a democracy that is only possible via cross-party consensus.
We set up Prosper UK because we believe our politics can do better, focusing on the economic growth that will help everyone in this country to prosper. This Commission on housing is our first step towards achieving that goal.
Gavin Barwell is a former chief of staff to the Prime Minister and a member of the House of Lords