This post is by Bruce Davis, founder and joint managing director of Abundance Investment
The current housing crisis is, alongside Brexit, the political hot potato. According to a recent report from Shelter, 1.15 million households were on the waiting list for social housing last year, with only 290,000 homes made available.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) today published its analysis of the Clean Growth Strategy (CGS), the government’s blueprint for meeting the targets it is legally bound to achieve under the Climate Change Act.
The analysis highlights a worrying gap (of 10-65 MTCO2e) between the government’s existing policies and commitments and the requirements set under the fourth and fifth carbon budgets. To bridge this gap and minimise delivery risks, the CCC says, the government must urgently firm up the policies, proposals and intentions laid out in the Clean Growth
Recent research has shown that the number of people who own their own homes is at a 30 year low and, with growing anxiety about young people being unable to get on the property ladder, the government has started to act. In the budget, Philip Hammond aimed to revive “the dream of home ownership” by abolishing the stamp duty for homes up to £300,000, designed to appeal to the group increasingly known as ‘generation rent’.
This post is by Shaun Spiers, chief executive of CPRE. It first appeared on CPRE’s blog.
There will be much to welcome in this month’s housing white paper. We expect a big emphasis on brownfield development and more support to enable local authority planning departments to do their job. Best of all, it looks set to address the main cause of the housing shortage: not planning or a lack of land, but the system’s over dependence on a dozen big companies to deliver the new homes the country needs. Read more
This post is by Andy Ford, director of the Centre for Efficient and Renewable Energy in Buildings (CEREB) at London South Bank University and Bruce Tofield, associate consultant with the Adapt Low Carbon Group at the Passivhaus Enterprise Centre, University of East Anglia.
What’s the easiest thing that we could do to reduce energy use, tackle climate change and make life healthier, more affordable and more comfortable for millions of people in the UK; something that will also promote higher productivity, quality and skills?
This post is by Hugh Ellis, chief planner at the Town and Country Planning Association. It is taken from the collection of essays, published last week by Green Alliance, Green social democracy: better homes in better places. This pamphlet, alongside similar collections on ‘Green liberalism’ and ‘Green conservatism’ (to be published this week), are part of our Green Roots programme, aiming to stimulate green thinking within the three dominant political traditions in the UK. This essay has also been posted on Labour List.
It is clear that the housing crisis is having a desperate impact on British people’s lives. It is also clear that the next government will have to face an acute economic and environmental crisis. The current national response to these complex challenges won’t secure the lasting progress we need. Welfare benefit reform is driving a whole new set of housing needs and new patterns of migration, and it’s increasing inequality and social division. Our deregulated planning system with no strategic teeth is at a low ebb and the ideologies of nudge theory and neoliberalism, although practically ineffective, still dominate the zeitgeist. Read more
This post is by Chi Onwurah, MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central. It is one of a collection of essays to be published later this week by Green Alliance, titled Green social democracy: better homes in better places. Similar collections are also being published under ‘Green liberalism’ and ‘Green conservatism’ projects, as part of our Green Roots programme, aiming to stimulate green thinking within the three dominant political traditions in the UK. A version of this piece has also been published on Labour List.
In 2006 the Labour Government introduced a ground-breaking policy for all new homes to be zero carbon from 2016. Zero carbon homes attracted wide support from businesses and charities, unleashing a wave of innovation across the construction sector and beyond. Community self build has an even greater potential, because as well as generating innovation it could also increase the supply of housing and deliver homes that are tailored to local and personal needs, and also high quality and green. Read more
