Michael Gove was appointed the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities on 15th September 2021 and Stuart Andrew was appointed as the Housing Minister in February 2022.

Last week, one was sacked after just nine months during the government chaos and the other resigned just 148 days after being appointed.

It would be easy to think this is a ‘one off’, but sadly as we all know it isn’t, and there have been many stories about the (ironically) revolving door for those in charge of housing in the government.

According to Inside Housing, there have been 20 housing ministers since 1997, meaning that most ministers in charge of putting a roof over people’s heads in this country haven’t lasted for much more than a year, which as someone pointed out to me is less time than it takes to actually build a home. In fact, as the chart below shows, the longest surviving housing minister was Yvette Cooper who nearly, but not quite, survived three years. Most – 13 – survived less than or just over 12 months.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davidjoleary_ housing-activity-6950420749266378752-Jk7W/

 

 

Taking the long view

I’ve been working in the property market now since 1999, and one of the things I know is that is I learn something new, if not several things, every day.

This isn’t a market you can get to grips with within a year or so. The statistics are typically poor, the legals and everything to do with property is hugely complex. Even with the best experts around you, it takes a long time to understand and navigate. And that’s if you know who the best experts to work with are! One of the hardest things I’ve had to do over the year is to understand who is genuinely telling you the truth about our property problems and how to solve them, and who is just following a self-interest agenda, irrespective of whether it helps house people or not.

Working in a housing job for around 12 months does not allow you anything like the time you need to understand the property market. In business, if you want to solve a problem you put an experienced person in charge who is passionate about delivering a good result. The critical thing is you give them a target too and currently the ones we have are not good enough and aren’t working for those that really need the help.

I would like to see someone in DLUCH, each individual MP (irrespective of the party they work for) take responsibility and local authorities house everyone in their area at a price they can afford. I would like to see them doing what should be their priority: reduce the housing waiting list.

There are over a million households eligible for a social home, but instead of doing something about this, the current overriding housing policy to solve problems seems to be to blame the private sector for the problems and then ‘beat them up’ with policies such as raising taxes to curb buy to let; cutting the cost of housing for those on benefits by capping Local Housing Allowance and trying to get developers to fund and provide social housing.

To make a real difference in the future, what we need from anyone moving forward in the ministry is:-

1 A belief that affordable housing can be delivered for all

2 The acceptance that it is government, local authorities and MPs responsibility to deliver affordable housing, not the private sector

3 A target and plan to be required to reduce and ideally irradicate housing waiting lists. Provide more social housing and at least we can finally make a start to solve the real housing market problems.