As the government has no housing policy, growing media frustration is welcome if as a result a chronic, vitally importance domestic policy problem receives earnest scrutiny rather than flippant or slipshod thought.
These four sound examples capture the point.
- Radio 4; Week in Westminster (26 November 2022). Rachel Wolf ( founding partner at Public First, and co-author of Conservative Party 2019 election manifesto) debates with Bob Seely MP the housing deficit . Asked if compromise is possible she replies simply ‘ probably no’.
2. Leading article, The Times: House building-blight ( 7 December 2022). Points out that Britain needs a housing supply policy which crosses party lines and carries over between parliaments. An important, but rare recognition of reality which is welcome.
3. Business, The Times: the Bank of England cannot afford to ignore the rental sector (Simon French; chief economist Panmure Gordon, 13 December 2022). Warning that the B of E is poised to raise interest rates, he warns that housing stock is notoriously slow to adjust to new patterns of demand, which introduces a scarcity premium to rents in many sought after areas.
4. Business, The Times; Opposition to housing reform has a complex, illlgical explanation (Ryan Bourne; Cato Institute, 1 December 2022). He reminds us that Tory MP’s are again trying to restrict housing supply, and points to the extraordinarily high level of ignorance, polluting housing debates with half-truths that exists, following five decades of damage. Based on my experience, when I first started to buy housing land in the late nineteen sixties, Bourne is correct.
Encouraging to see The Times leading article. The next step is recognition. There is a singular bone of contention uniquely locked into the housing deficit debate: housing has a for sure a a spatial feature. It is this feature which drives 50+ Tory refuseniks to act with passion from the heart. After all, their constituents live with spatial decisions, good or bad, for a long time!
Ian Campbell
15 December 2022
