Get to London, Sat June 18th for the 2nd National March against the Housing and Planning Bill

[Mark Brown]

Saturday 18th June - the second national march against the Housing and Planning
Bill

The government are in the process of passing a legislative bill through
Parliament called the “Housing and Planning Bill”. At the heart of this
legislation are ‘Starter Homes’ – targeted to boost the grossly-inflated housing
market designed to transform ‘Generation Rent into Generation Buy’ by providing
discounts of 20% to first-time buyers which at 4/5ths the market price will
still be unaffordable to many (calculations for London demand an ‘ income of
£77,000 and a deposit of £98,000). For council housing tenants, the bill
requires councils to change how they charge tenants with a combined income of
more than £30,000 outside of London and £40,000 in the capital. Under the
so-called “pay to stay” measures, tenants will be charged the same level as the
private rent sector, which could force thousands of people from their homes.

The ‘Planning’ component of this bill sets in motion a complete overhaul of the
planning system primarily to give housebuilders more freedom to build more
houses whilst at the same time diluting the definition of “affordable housing”,
combining with the ‘Housing’ aspect of the bill to boost the housing market with
measures such as expanding right-to-buy to housing association tenants and
‘Starter Homes’. The central measures in the Housing and Planning Bill propose
key changes to the definition of planning permission, creating a new definition
of “Planning Permission in Principle” with “technical details” (such as built
form, density, bedroom size, access, social infrastructure and flood mitigation
measures) ironed out after initial consent is agreed in principle, a new
planning framework which seems to earmark a more robust, flexible and efficient
planning system that better responds to the economic environment. However, the
difficulty here is that policy compliance on “technical details” are critical
matters within any consideration of a planning application and they cannot be
checked at the “in principle” stage, and once “in principle” consent is given it
is unclear to what extent planning authorities can impose their key policy
requirements.

The ‘Housing’ component of this bill makes fundamental changes to social
housing, including making tenancies less secure, and together with extending
“Right-to-Buy” to housing association tenants in a massive sweeping way, forces
the sale of high-value council homes – changes which will further shrink social
housing and further expand the “Buy-to-Let” housing sector and private rental
sector, with proceeds from sales unlikely to be ploughed back into more social
housing as the bill will formally require councils to subsidise Housing
Associations’ Right to Buy discounts up to £100,000, with no guarantee of
replacement homes at similar rents in the same area.

In their plans, council housing is considered only at the margins, reconceived
as a resource to be utilised only as a safety net for the very poorest in
society, whilst remaining poor and low-income working population are consigned
to being accommodated through social housing within housing associations, where
rent is marginally discounted, or in the private-rental sector, where rents are
high. The existing and future Social Housing stock will shrink under these plans
because there will be no statutory obligation on housing associations to provide
like-for-like quantitative replacement social housing in regard to right-to buy
purchases of social housing by housing association tenants, so reducing the
total stock of social housing. The Chartered Institute for Housing say that with
the implementation of these plans, the UK total social housing stock reduce by a
massive 370,000 by the year 2020.

The long term trend of the shrinking social housing base and transfer of
rentiers into the private sector rental market has increased the housing benefit
bill, which has risen by £650 million a year since 2009-10 (for 2013/14 it was
£24.6 billion and is expected to reach £27 billion by 2018/19). Under these
changes, the housing benefit bill will doubtless accelerate, which has been
pointed out to Tory ministers insisting on driving home these changes.  The
Tories' hard-headed inability to listen and reject 13 amendments by the House of
Lords to this controversial bill is reminiscent of the Thatcher government's
ill-conceived poll-tax in 1990 and more immediately, plain face-saving at a time
when this omnishambles Tory government has conducted several embarrassing uturns
over cuts to disability benefit, forcing all schools to become academies, taxing
personal pension schemes in last year's budget, and what now looks like a
climb-down on forcing young doctors to sign new contracts.

Mark



Please keep in touch with updates and suggestions, and if you want leaflets,
speaker or help to hold meetings.
www.killthehousingbill.wordpress.com