Labour Housing Group - Upcoming events

 

"We have an exciting events programme in front of us! Join us online in conversation with these leading housing experts over the next few months - open to all LHG members! @DavidOrrCBE 

@beth_stratford

@bateswalsall1 @Alison_Inman

Not a member? Join today! https://labourhousing.org/membership/

"Housing Voice" - for Affordable Housing in Britain

On Thursday I went to the Parliamentary launch of Housing Voice the Affordable Homes Alliance
in the Jubilee Room of the House of Commons.

The meeting was hosted by it's Chair - Lord Whitty (2nd right). This cross Party campaign has been formed to raise awareness of the lack of affordable homes across the UK and the need for
urgent government action. Lord Whitty also spoke at last week's UNISON housing fringe.

David Orr, the Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation, Shadow Housing Minister Alison Seabeck MP (speaking) , Alison Graham of Child Poverty Action Group, Roger McKenzie, Assistant General Secretary, UNISON and Stephen Gilbert, the Liberal Democrat Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Housing spoke at the launch.

UNISON sponsored the launch and YouGov research which has showed that:-

• 71% of the public do not think the Coalition Government is giving much attention to affordable housing
• For those in private rented accommodation affordable housing is their biggest concern after the economy – 40% compared to 28% for health and 18% for education
• Building more homes for rent would be a very popular policy with 70% support - including a majority of supporters of the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats or Labour
• Given a list of possible policies, less than half (40%) supported the idea of increasing supply by moving people from their council or housing association homes once their incomes rise above a certain limit
• A massive 18% - almost 1 in 5 – always or often struggle to pay their rent or mortgage

"The Housing Voice campaign aims to become a forum for ideas and a vehicle for action in order to build public awareness and push for urgent Government action to deliver more affordable housing"

So all good stuff. What I found interesting was:- Lib Dem Stephen Gilbert MP recognising that we have 250k new households per year but we are only building 125k new homes per year; Alison Seabeck MP thinks that there are votes to be won in planning but too many MPs think it will lose them votes.

David Orr pointed out that countries such as Finland and Norway plan to build 7 homes per 1,000 population to adequately house their people. This would have meant the equivalent of 420k new homes in the UK. We only built 100k last year - the smallest number since 1923 - when our population was half it is now.

Former Housing officer, now an Assistant General Sectary of UNISON, Roger McKenzie, reminded everyone that we we do live in one of the richest countries on the planet but if people do not have dignity, jobs and homes then life becomes intolerable.

Alison Graham of CPAG pointed out how can children who live in awful housing succeed in education if they smell of damp. (Which as a housing officer I know what she means) Toby Lloyd of Shelter was really pleased that at this launch that there was a wide spread of players and not the usual "housing suspects".

  

Finally, in the Q&A I mentioned that there seems to be a clear connection between countries cited in the debate who have good housing policies for all and are also those countries who are more successful because they are more equal. This would seem to support the arguments put forward in "The Spirit Level" book that societies that are more equal are simply better for everyone - rich and poor.

Update: forgot to add that Alison Seabeck MP had previously agreed to be a guest speaker at a UNISON Housing Association Branch Labour Link meeting, which we now hope will take place early September.

EU Housing Election Hustings

Catch up: Last Friday I went to a breakfast meeting on the European elections organised by Inside Housing. London Labour MEP Mary Honeyball (and blogger) Green MEP Jean Lambert; Liberal Democrat candidate Jonathan Fryer and Conservative Party candidate Warwick Lightfoot (no web site?) gave short speeches followed by a Q&A.

The meeting was held at the UK office of the European Parliament. Inside Housing Editor Stuart Macdonald chaired the meeting and the opening speaker was David Orr, CEO of the National Housing Federation and President of CECODHAS (which I had never heard of before).

David explained that CECODHAS represents 46 national and regional social (I don’t like that word “social” but...) housing organisations in 19 EU countries whose members manage some 25 million homes and house 75 million Europeans! He explained that while housing is not an EU “competency” (it’s a member state responsibility) it does have a role tackling homelessness, social policy and climate change. The EU is an economic entity but it is also a social project. Nowadays 80% of environmental and 50% of social legislation comes from the EU. There is a £100 million for energy efficient retrofitting. Currently 27% of green house gases emissions come from domestic housing while “only” 3% from air travel. He also made some interesting observations on the possible future enhanced role of the European Investment Bank in public housing. Could this be a way to get investment into UK housing?

Jonathan Fryer spoke first. He claimed that the Lib Dems are the most pro-EU Party. He is their number two candidate (it’s a Party list PR system) and he only missed out last from being elected by 0.6% of the vote. He is pretty keen on environmental issues, reform of the EU and good quality, accessible and affordable housing for all. Which was pretty much a familiar theme (to a lessor or greater degree) for all the speakers.

Jean Lambert came next as would be expected emphasised environmental issues to the fore. I like the idea of “every home is its own power station” even thought I am not sure how that will work out in practice.

Warwick Lightfoot appears at first to be the typical Tory Squire caricature with his name, drawl, good suit, public school confidence, occupation and dare I say haircut? But he bravely admitted that his mother had firsthand experience of housing difficulties when she had to flee his father due to domestic violence. He was however "fortunate" that her parents could afford to provide them with a cottage next to their home. He made what was to my ears a rarely heard argument that Margaret Thatcher was actually the first Green British politician! He also suggested that due to complex rules and agreements the UK would suffer financially if the EU actually increased its expenditure on the UK.

Mary spoke last and appealed to everyone present to remember that this election is not about British MP expenses, it’s about Europe, and it’s about reforming the EU agricultural policy and reminding the French that everyone does not live in their countryside. It’s about the nitty gritty of getting environmental policy into actual legislation and it’s about promoting and getting implemented integrated urban development.

In the Q&A I thought that the debate so far had been a little too polite and far too consensual. So I decided to see if there is in fact true red, blue, green or yellow water between the candidates. My question was that health & safety of employees is an EU competence and the recent attempt to end the British opt-out from the working time directorate (WTD) had recently failed in Europe. Since work life balance and occupational stress due to a long hours is a key issue to many housing associations what are the candidates’ views about this issue?

"Allowing" workers to work more than an average of 48 hours per week over a whole year is bad for the employee and the business.

We then had an interesting debate!

Very surprisingly Jonathon Fryer said that the Lib Dems were against the removal of the WTD opt out! He advanced some rather strange arguments around retained firefighters and junior doctors to support this view.

Jean Lambert and the Greens were strongly in favour of getting rid.

Warwick Lightfoot was not only strongly in favour of the opt out but proudly accepted personal responsibility for the opt out while being an economic advisor to the government at that time.

Mary of course pointed out that the Labour MEPs were opposed to the opt out and had stood up to pressure from the British Labour government over this issue. Well done!

All in all a very interesting event, it was perhaps appropriate that this public housing meeting of landlord representatives was disrupted several times due to the anti-social behaviour of certain local residents. The Brigade of Guards had decided to send several military bands and pipers to march around Hyde Park and in doing so had totally drowned out the speakers. For some reason I didn’t foresee any of the hard bitten public housing professionals present going off to apply for ASBOs against them.