Manifestos Part 1

Apologies – it has been a week and a half.  I usually have posts written earlier in the week but, well, things can get in the way.

In this post, I am going to discuss the manifestos as they relate to housing.  Today, I am going to deal with the Conservative and Reform UK ones, without discussing the various shenanigans around them.  This blog takes them at face value as their policies which they would implement if elected.  I comment on them, not from a political perspective, but from the perspective always employed in this blog – that is, law and policy.

Conservative

They argue in bold that “Wales is in the midst of a housing crisis”.  Their diagnosis of the causes of that crisis are:

“Over the past 27 years, Labour and Plaid Cymru have failed to build enough new homes to keep up with demand, resulting in spiralling rents, unaffordable home ownership for younger people and prevented older people from downsizing.”

As per my previous post on “crisis”, this then leads them in to their agenda for reform which, in essence, is for more home ownership, which “will help kickstart economic growth and get Wales working”.

They want to

• scrap stamp duty on primary residences
• restore the right to buy “… reinvesting sale proceeds into more affordable housing and protecting homes from sale for 10 years”
• “extend and expand” the help to buy scheme
• Engage new planning reforms ensuring timely decisions and adopting an “infrastructure first” approach to housing
• Review Rent Smart Wales (which has been a bit of a bugbear of theirs, given its regulatory role)
• have “deposit passporting” in social housing (I didn’t know that this was a problem in social housing to be honest)
• stop leasehold (that is already happening and, as I understand it, is not devolved anyway)
• set targets for wheelchair accessible accommodation – well-intentioned, no doubt, but, why single out the needs of wheelchair users over other adaptations?
• And, innovatively “Work with the UK Government to give young people a £5,000 tax rebate in their first job, to help them save towards their first home”

On homelessness, there is not so much to say.  But, they commit to giving veterans top priority on social housing allocation (as to which see also below).

Other than a couple of innovations, the reliance on home ownership is not particularly unhelpful when there are acknowledged issues with social housing and the acknowledged need for more social housing.

Reform UK

Although not given the rhetorical flourish of other parts of the manifesto, their starting point on housing appears to be this:

“HOUSING: Wales faces a serious housing shortage. We need at least
10,000 additional homes just to catch up. A Reform Welsh Government
will speed up planning and intervene where councils fail to deliver
the homes their communities need.”

So, there is an acceptance of a “serious housing shortage” (not, it is to be noted, a crisis or emergency); and that there is a need for at least 10,000 new homes, but that is not setting a target for new build or delivery.  That is somewhat half-hearted, and there is nothing there about quality of existing or new build property.

The Reform UK manifesto proudly proclaims that “We will prioritise Welsh men and women for social housing” (note the rather awkward gendered commitment).  They seem to want to do this by imposing a 10 year residence requirement for the allocation of social housing, with that requirement being waived for armed forces veterans.  My sense is that this will be difficult for them to do unless they have some sort of bypass over the Equality Act, homelessness law, and judicial decisions about the allocation of social housing.  This commitment will require careful re-working of the existing allocation provisions, and overwriting of quite a lot of other commitments.  Most local authorities comply with the armed forces covenant and there is a commitment to use secondary legislation to remove the local connection test.  So, that commitment does no more than continue existing policy.

They seem to want to deal with the issue of second homes by taking central control of some decisions – at least, they say that they will impose firm decisions on councils regarding planning, but I am not entirely sure what that means.

They will “overhaul HMO licensing to prevent migrant HMOs: licences will be refused, revoked or suspended when a landlord is caught knowingly housing illegal immigrants”.  This is not an overhaul of HMO licensing, but, no doubt, something which local authorities will also be considering in their licensing role.

Homelessness is not (as far as I have seen) mentioned in the manifesto.

In short, there is not much that is going on below the surface as regards housing, as far as I can see, beyond the commitment to rework social housing allocation, which I suspect may not be something which will be regarded as compatible with other statutory obligations – at least, they will need to consider carefully how it can be done.