Housing: Government guilty of 'deplorable' affordable home failures

Government has wasted money on schemes that never get off the ground and fail to deliver new homes, report claims.

The Government’s housing department is barely worthy of the name, having been guilty of wasting a fortune on schemes that have failed to deliver new homes, succeeding only in wasting the time of would-be first-time buyers.

That’s the remarkable conclusion of a damning new report from MPs.

The Public Accounts Committee of MPs is responsible for scrutinising how the Government spends taxpayer money, and whether it is securing good value for money.

And it’s fair to say that in a barnstorming new report, it isn’t too impressed with the way that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has gone about trying to address the nation’s housing shortage.

In fact, it goes so far as to warn that the department doesn’t deserve to have the word ‘housing’ in its name.

Meg Hillier MP, chair of the committee, said: “It has serially, constantly failed to deliver affordable new homes or even make a serious attempt to execute its own housing policies or achieve targets before they are ditched, unannounced – costs sunk and outcomes unknown.”

Wasting buyers’ time

Back in 2015, the department launched a discounted Starter Homes programme, with the promise of developing 200,000 new affordable properties.

Since then it hasn’t actually put the laws in place to make the scheme a reality, though it wasn’t formally dropped until this year.

As the PAC report notes, around 85,000 people registered their interest in taking advantage of the scheme, only to find that their time had been wasted. 

This isn’t the first time this has happened ‒ the committee notes that it has reported regularly on housing delivery over the last five years “and not one of the promised housing programmes has delivered its objectives”.

It is unlikely to be the last either, with a new First Homes policy now being promised by the Government though there remain no details on when it will actually be available.

Learning lessons

At the heart of the PAC’s report ‒ and it’s something that’s been clear to plenty of us for a long time ‒ is that while the department talks a terrific game when it comes to improving housing delivery, it isn’t that good at actually backing up that talk.

It’s easy to announce a fantastic new programme that will mean first-time buyers have far more affordable homes to buy. But those words are meaningless on their own. 

The Starter Homes policy was a complete failure, and now we have a First Homes initiative which is hugely reliant on contributions from developers, with a structure that the committee has warned is “complex”, “lacking transparency” and “risks less money being available to local authorities for housing and infrastructure”.

That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Say what you mean

To add to the fun, the department remains far from clear when it comes to what it actually means by “affordable”. 

As the report notes: “The Department claims that ‘affordable’ means different things in different settings: different regions have differing requirements for housing that is affordable, and it varies in meaning across different housing programmes.”

This shouldn’t be difficult. If you need a paragraph to explain what is meant by an affordable home, then I think something has gone badly wrong.

The revolving door of ministers

But for me, one of the biggest issues with the way that housing is handled by this Government ‒ and its predecessors ‒ has been the revolving door of Housing Ministers.

It feels like every time there is a reshuffle, there is a new name on the door.

And with every new minister comes ‘bright’ new ideas, the need to introduce some sort of ‘fresh’ programme. 

The problem with that is that our housing shortage isn’t going to be solved overnight.

There isn’t a quick fix that means we suddenly begin building 300,000 new homes a year, the stated ambition of the department. 

It’s a long-term problem that is going to require a long-term approach to put right, but we are stuck with Governments that are only interested in short-term fixes ‒ or rather, regular announcements of new programmes in order to bag a few headlines, rather than actually do anything meaningful.

It can be easy for those of us fortunate enough to already be on the housing ladder to look the other way, to consider this only a real problem for those wannabe homeowners.

But that’s cobblers. It’s our tax money that is being blown on these schemes that go nowhere.

I have no problem paying tax, but I do like the idea that the money is then spent properly rather than wasted on the latest wheeze that never really gets beyond the white paper stage.

The PAC report isn’t wrong in describing the performance of the MHCLG as “deplorable”. And it’s not just first-time buyers suffering as a result.