Opinion: Housing Ministry farce must end now

The rotating door to the housing department must end if the Government is serious about fixing our housing crisis.

The Government has had a newsworthy couple of days, with the Chequers meeting to thrash out precisely what “Brexit means Brexit” actually means, which has led to resignations and yet another reshuffle.

Dominic Raab has now taken on the brief of Brexit Secretary, but while all of the focus has been on what this means for our exit from Europe, the added knock-on effect is that we are looking for a new Housing Minister.

Again.

The rotating door of the Housing Minister

There is no more farcical role in the government than that of Housing Minister.

This isn’t a new thing either – successive Governments have treated the post with utter disdain, only allowing ministers to dip their toe into the department before moving them on again to some other unheralded post.

Raab had been Housing Minister since January, when he replaced Alok Sharma. Sharma got the role last June as a replacement for Gavin Barwell, who had lost the job after losing his seat in the general election.

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In total, we are now onto our 16th Housing Minister in the last 17 years, with the Tories set to appoint their eighth in eight years.

Ludicrous and outrageous that we are about to have our third housing minister since Grenfell. There isn't a single government department that doesn't need consistent, authoritative leadership just now.

— Felicity Hannah (@FelicityHannah) July 9, 2018

This is appalling, particularly given the Prime Minister has made a big play of wanting to fix the ‘broken housing market’ since moving into Number 10.

How on earth is the housing department supposed to make any actual progress on improving the rate at which we build homes when every couple of months they have a new Minister to introduce to the industry?

Building homes is not a quick process, so how on earth can we expect a Housing Minister to do anything at all when no sooner have they learned the first names of the senior team at Taylor Wimpey and Barratt than they are being shuffled off to some junior role in Education, the Foreign Office or  – god help them – the Department for Work and Pensions?

Breaking news – we don’t build enough homes

It’s not exactly a secret that we have a serious housing shortage in the UK, though the Government has made some progress in boosting the rate at which we knock out new homes.

In 2016/17, a total of 217,000 new homes were delivered, the highest level since 2007/8.

But even that rate of production isn’t close to enough. A report from the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs suggested that in order to have a “moderating” effect on house prices, and meet the pent-up demand, then “ at least 300,000 homes a year need to be built for the foreseeable future.

Otherwise, the average age of a first-time buyer will continue to rise.”

We also aren’t building enough homes that can honestly be described as affordable - just 41,000 of those new homes in 2016/17 met that definition, which isn’t going to do much to help first-time buyers either.

Is it time the Government became a mortgage lender?

Cutting corners

There are real concerns about the slapdash standards of some of the homes that are being delivered too.

Last year Bovis Homes had to apologise to housebuyers over the shoddy quality of the homes they had bought, and put aside £7m to cover the cost of fixing them, while a study by housing charity Shelter found that more than half of people that buy a new-build property have issues with its construction, fittings and faults with utilities.

Clearly, relying on the big housebuilders to simply produce homes a bit quicker is leading to corners being cut and the production of substandard homes. Solving the housing shortage by building a load of expensive, rubbish, and potentially unsafe homes is not much of a solution is it?

It’s time to get serious

I don’t have the answers for tackling the housing crisis. But as a longstanding problem, it will clearly take some time to actually set it right.

That means installing a Housing Minister who actually wants to be in the role, rather than viewing it as a stepping stone to the Cabinet proper, and then leaving them in the post for a full parliamentary term.

This interminable game of ‘pass the housing brief’ is robbing future generations of homes to call their own and must come to a long-overdue end.

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