Ministers talk about building more houses and helping people become homeowners. But this hides the truth that their housing record is five years of failure on every front.

Home ownership has fallen every year since 2010 and is now at the lowest rate in a generation. The Conservatives have overseen the lowest number of homes built under any government since the 1920s and the lowest number of genuinely affordable homes for two decades. Homelessness is rising; private rents have soared.

So in a political panic about falling so far short on their new-build numbers, the bill gives ministers wide-ranging powers to impose new house building and override both local community concerns and local plans. With a total of 32 new housing and planning powers for the centre, this legislation signals the end of localism.

Ministers’ rhetoric also hides the realities at the heart of this new housing bill. At prices up to £450,000, new “starter homes” don’t do nearly enough to help those struggling to buy and will be totally out of reach for most young people and families on ordinary incomes. Most damaging of all, the bill sounds the death knell for our ability to build the affordable homes to rent and buy that are so badly needed.

The forced sell-off of council homes to fund right-to-buy discounts for housing associations will mean affordable homes currently set aside for local people will be sold on to speculators and buy-to-let landlords, with no prospect or plan for replacement like for like in the areas they’re lost.

While housing associations may build more homes as they sell under right to buy, many will increasingly build for open market sale and rent. Indeed, a third of them now say they’ll no longer build any affordable homes.

And as ministers use new powers through the planning system to impose starter-home obligations on developers, the system that has provided nearly 250,000 genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy in the last decade will be choked off. All told, Shelter predicts the bill will lead to the loss of 180,000 affordable homes over the next five years.

Like the cut to tax credits, this bill is the chancellor’s work, with his political fingerprints all over it. And like tax credits, it faces a looming row in the Lords. Above all, it fails the same low- and middle-income working families that the Tories claim they represent.

The more people see of this bill, the less they’ll like it. It is set to become a slow-burn problem all the way through to 2020. Some moderate Tory council leaders and MPs already recognise it as bad policy but know the chancellor believes it to be good politics.

I’m determined to expose this bill as both bad policy and bad politics.

John Healey is shadow cabinet minister for housing and planning

” …While in the public sector – that’s largely homes built by housing associations which tend to be more often in the “affordable” category – the number was down a more precipitate 4%.

This morning, one housing association chief executive told The Times newspaper that it would certainly be cutting the number of affordable homes it planned to build this year.
Neil Hadden, of Genesis Housing Association, one of the largest in the UK, said that he was “looking carefully at priorities for spending”.

The reason? Uncertainty over how new Right to Buy plans will affect housing associations (the government wants to allow tenants to buy their homes at a discount and cuts to housing benefit which has meant income for many associations has fallen or is at risk.

… The latest figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government released in August said that house building “starts” (that’s actually building houses rather than registering a plan to do so) were down 14% compared to the previous three months and down 6% compared to the same period a year earlier.

And that comes against a background of generally poor construction figures as the sector becomes concerned about economic head winds.

It may not be time to roll out the tumbrils for UK house building.

But the latest figures could be making things a little twitchy for a Prime Minister who has made affordable housing one of the key priorities for this Parliament.”

To compound the problem, local authorities will not be able to insist that developers in their area continue to build for the widest range of incomes. They will be forced to accept Starter Homes as part of Section 106 negotiations. Even if they have homeless families stuck in temporary accommodation; even if local businesses complain that they can’t recruit employees to low paid positions; even if they know market prices are completely out of step with local wages; and even if they know they have no chance of meeting the need for social housing from their own dwindling stock.

This isn’t about the devil in the detail. This now has to be seen as the intention.

It follows the Right to Buy agreement with the National Housing Federation that will sell off social rented homes at a discount, and replace them with shared ownership or Starter Homes.

It follows the plan to forcibly sell council houses to the highest bidder, to fund those Right to Buy discounts.

It follows the forced reduction in social rents which the OBR predicts could mean 14,000 fewer social homes are built over this parliament.

It follows the introduction of Affordable Rent, which at up to 80% of market rents wasn’t even affordable for those on the lowest incomes.

It follows the repeated refusal to let councils that want to build council homes borrow to be able to do so.

And given the full-throated endorsement of homeownership as the only game in town, it’s a fair bet that it precedes the announcement in the Comprehensive Spending Review that any grant funding should be directed to low cost homeownership rather than a genuinely affordable rental product.

All of which leaves very little for those who realistically can’t buy anytime soon. There’s nothing wrong with home-ownership obviously, but even at its 2003 peak ownership topped out at 71%. As KPMG point out, there will always remain a sizeable proportion of households who need an alternative, either temporarily or for the long-term. But with existing supply sold off and little if anything being built, social housing will no longer be able to perform that role. This will leave those on the lowest incomes at the mercy of the private rented sector.

“In one of his central policies due to be unveiled in his closing speech, Cameron will say: “For years politicians have been talking about building what they call affordable homes but the phrase was deceptive. It basically means ones that were only available for rent. What people want are homes they can actually own.

“When a generation of hardworking men and women in their 20s and 30s are waking up each morning in their childhood bedrooms, that should be a wake-up call for all of us. We need a national crusade to get houses built. That means banks lending, government releasing land and, yes, planning being reformed.”

In the key reform, ministers will change the definition of affordable housing to include not just properties for rent, but starter homes, as part of the government’s programme to build low-cost homes for first-time buyers so long as they are under 40 years old. It will mean developers will have fulfilled their obligations to a council if they build homes for purchase.

Under the scheme, houses must must be 20% below the market rent and capped at £450,000 inside London and £250,000 outside. …