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The Week in Housing: nutrient neutrality, crumbling concrete and the lack of social housing
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Good afternoon.
The big housing news this week was nutrient neutrality, the anti-pollution rule that has put an effective freeze on housebuilding in dozens of English local authorities and will now effectively be axed.
The rules, which were designed to limit the amount of pollutants that flow into rivers, had been preventing the construction of 100,000 new homes according to house builders.
It is an issue that Inside Housing has been covering since 2019, when it was primarily an issue in Hampshire.
An interesting question is why the government has fought this fight for four years – including legally – if it was ultimately willing to ditch the rules outright.
Developers have long argued that river pollution is primarily caused by agriculture, with new housebuilding a minor contributor, but if the government agrees with this argument, then why wait so long?
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The relaxation is ultimately good news for those in need of a home – many of the affected areas have a desperate need for new housing and developments of all tenures were impacted by it – but river pollution is no small issue, and the country is majorly lacking a serious plan to deal with it.
It may be worth asking whether there was a way to extract more from those who will ultimately profit from the housebuilding to help pay for the clean-up of the rivers and the necessary mitigation. The £200m committed comes straight from taxpayers.
Elsewhere, with Inside Housing’s Build Social campaign up and running, there were several reminders this week of why we think it is so important.
First, exclusive research from Homeless Link, which showed that two in five people in homelessness accommodation were “ready to move on but can’t”. The reason being a lack of available social housing or private housing that is available at Local Housing Allowance rates.
Second, the news from Hastings that the cost of providing this homelessness accommodation is pushing the local council to bankruptcy.
This is a story which neatly underscores the economic madness of failing to build more social housing (or to provide a benefits system that honestly reflects the cost of private housing). The cost is still paid by the state, just a different part of it, which makes the supposed savings made by not investing utterly illusory.
Third was the shocking homelessness figures from Scotland, which provide as clear a reminder as any that this is not just an issue in England.
Elsewhere, a reminder of the importance of another campaign (which we helped launch and still support): End Our Cladding Scandal. Despite the sense of progress over the past year, things on the ground are changing very slowly.
Two-thirds of high rise flats still require a dreaded External Wall System 1 form in order to secure a sale – a number that is actually rising. The affected residents still await a genuine long-term plan to truly end this scandal.
And news this week of a building safety scandal that may yet come, with the latest warning about the risk of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete in social housing – the ‘Aero chocolate’-like concrete which decays over time and carries a risk of collapse.
Amid a flurry of warnings about schools and the breaking news that some will not open in time for the new term, experts have told us there is also a need for urgent checks in residential properties.
The government’s view is that this is a matter for individual property owners – something we have heard before in the context of cladding safety.
It is a shame not to see more clarity and leadership in a situation as potentially serious as this, especially one where it is still extremely unclear what the genuine scale of the risk is.
You would not want this issue to slip below the radar and see a preventable disaster allowed to happen. But nor would you want to suddenly undermine confidence in safe buildings, with all the associated consequences for lending and insurance.
If the cladding crisis has taught us anything, it’s that avoiding either outcome requires a cool head, strong leadership, clear guidance and a good grasp of the scope of the problem before a crisis happens – something which only the national government is really able to co-ordinate. That it is unwilling to feels like a mistake. We can only hope it does not prove a costly one.
Have a great weekend.
Peter Apps, deputy editor, Inside Housing
Say hello: peter.apps@insidehousing.co.uk
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