The Budget gives the housing sector a window of opportunity: take it

Debate in the coming days will focus on marking the chancellor’s homework. ‘A’ for lifting the HRA caps for councils in high-demand areas and beefing up the HCA to form Homes England.

‘B’ for £15.3bn new money during the next five years for capital funding, loans and guarantees, but ‘C’ for pretending this number was actually £44bn (which includes pre-announced measures). And mixed reviews for the stamp duty changes.

“Having worked in the Treasury, I know that the issue getting top billing in the Budget is the issue that is defining the government.”

However, the real takeaway is that the housing sector now has a window of opportunity. Having worked in the Treasury, I know that the issue getting top billing in the Budget is the issue that is defining the government.

For the first time since 1951, when Churchill summoned Macmillan and asked him to “build the houses for the people”, this issue is housing supply.

There are three key reasons why housing has been elevated to the pressing domestic issue of the day.

First, there is a serious housing crisis: on average, house prices are now almost seven times the average income, the country has not once hit its new build target in the past decade, and the number of homeless households has risen to more than 50,000 per year.

Second, this crisis has now spread far beyond London: Manchester, Birmingham, the whole of the South West and many other parts of the country desperately need new homes.

“The crisis is affecting every swathe of the population"

Third, the crisis is affecting every swathe of the population: an entire generation, including many middle class millennials, fear they have no prospect of ever escaping private rentals to finally get on the housing ladder.

This has created a burning platform to which politicians of all colours are responding. We in the housing sector should take advantage of this opportunity to do more than just ask central government for money, by fundamentally changing the way the table is set.

This means proposing, pushing for, and delivering reforms that last long after the next issue (immigration or policing or the armed forces or something else) replaces housing as the government’s priority.

Here are three ideas.

First, we need a new generation of housing professionals: urban planners, technical apprentices, community service officers, housing asset managers, construction workers and housing administrators.

“Graduates should think that working in housing, is just as attractive as working in education”

Graduates should think that working in housing, for a housing association or local authority, is just as attractive as working in education. Schools, higher education colleges and universities should all buy into this mission.

Second, the housing sector needs to reset its relationship with government. Housing associations and local authorities should be permanently liberated to plan, finance and deliver largescale new build projects, without going cap-in-hand to Whitehall.

Permanent funding settlements and regulatory reform is the path towards this.

Allowing housing associations to reclassify as private sector organisations is a welcome start.

Third, housing delivery bodies should draw up plans to meet long-term needs as well as short-term ones.

Squeezing new units into every spare inner-city space is certainly welcome in addressing the immediate crisis, but bigger thinking will be needed in the longer term.

That might mean increasing housing density, experimenting with new types of builds, new towns or all of the above.

Only measures like these will deliver the structural improvements the sector demands. Most governments, in retrospect, opened a window of opportunity for a given sector: Margaret Thatcher and the ‘big bang’ in finance, Tony Blair and the academisation of education, David Cameron and city deals for regional development.

Now is the time for housing to do the same, by taking advantage of the window of opportunity that just opened up. Take it.

Benjamin Clayton, former chief of staff at the National Infrastructure Commission and current fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government