National conveyancing giant Irwin Mitchel has called on Prime Minister Liz Truss to shut the revolving door at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC).

Writing an open letter to the PM, Nicola Gooch, planning partner at Irwin Mitchell and Claire Petricca-Riding, head of planning and environment at the firm, say: “England is in the middle of an acute housing shortage. There is no silver bullet. No single solution. Tackling the crisis will take a concerted effort, over a considerable period of time, by people who truly understand the sector.

CHURN

“The constant churn of senior ministers at DLUHC has not helped. In fact, it just adds to the sense of uncertainty and instability.”

Gooch and Petricca-Riding point out that the department has had seven secretary of states and eleven housing ministers in the past ten years.

“It is rare for an appointee to remain in place for more than eighteen months,” they say in the letter. “This level of turnover makes it almost impossible for the politicians in charge of resolving our housing crisis to truly understand it.

Let’s hope Simon Clarke is up to the job and stays the course.”

“If the new Prime Minister is serious about tackling the housing crisis, we need a significant period of stability at DLUHC. Let’s hope Simon Clarke is up to the job and stays the course.”

GRIPES

Other gripes include taking local government and civic infrastructure seriously and to stop demonising developers and deifying the Green Belt.

“You cannot solve our housing crisis without building houses,” they say. “Recent anti-development, and particularly anti-house builder, rhetoric has been far from helpful.”

And they add: “Green belt does not mean green field or even open countryside. It just means that the land is located near a major city or urban conurbation. In and of itself, that is not a good reason for it to be treated as sacrosanct.”