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| Photograph: Scaffold Repair Construction from Pixabay (License) (Cropped) |
It seems that the government has woken up to the need to act on domestic issues. And yet, with the pressure on, the government has decided to start by pointing the finger at others.
Theresa May's ministry, and it's predecessor, have made some major pledges on housing that have not been met. Pledges of several hundreds of thousands of new homes a year that have not been delivered - as admitted by Housing Secretary Sajid Javid last year in a review.
So the government has laid it's plan to tackle this. On Sunday, the Javid issued a warning, via The Sunday Times, that the government would be putting pressure on councils to meet it's targets - prefacing plans to change up it's framework to push even higher targets, set against affordability of local homes.
The aggressive tone was complemented by the threat of stripping from councils decision-making power over what is built in local areas. The threat of intervention is not one that will be taken lightly.
The Prime Minister, today, followed up on Javid's set up to issue a warning to home building firms. She criticised the practice of 'land banking' and announced that firms could be penalised for delays with refusal of planning permission for future projects.
While she acknowledged that young people had a right to be angry - and that, without the 'bank of mum and dad', many would find it impossible to get a foothold on the property - she has answered that anger by shifting the blame to local councils and building firms.
There are real questions about the actual impact of land banking, why firms take so much time to build after planning permission has been received and whether supply is throttled - against which the industry defends itself vigorously.
But even more important are the big questions, that are being ignored, about the government's role in this present crisis. There have been deep cuts to local authority funding. Schemes like help-to-buy have drained social housing stock without adequate restitution or replacement - and driven up prices.
Will pressure on councils and firms to hit higher targets within narrower time frames deliver on policy promises? Or will it just increase the risk of corners being cut?
The Local Government Association (LGA) responded to the government's announcement, and threat of intervention, by saying it was 'misguided' and that the basic block on progress for local authorities was lack of funds with which to build their own homes - for which borrowing powers were needed.
As with Chancellor Philip Hammond's budget, these measures are just tweaks and salves. The Government's blame game isn't addressing the core problems - it's finding scapegoats. That isn't good enough.
There are bigger questions to ask about long term investment, about the role of land and the capture of it's value by a class of rentiers. The government is avoiding these problems in the hope that they'll go away. They won't.
