BUDGET 2017: Housing and infrastructure are indistinguishable. What we need is a national policy that is regionally implemented and which covers both, writes Moda Living managing director Tony Brooks.
If the Barker Review of Housing Supply was a classic album, it would have been re-released at least twice in a snazzy box with postcards and handwritten lyrics. Unlike the Stones, U2 or Black Sabbath however, not too many people have listened to Kate Barker since her 2004 classic.
As the Budget staggers into view, pleas to fix the housing crisis sound increasingly like a broken record. More than 13.5 years and 11 housing ministers later, nothing much has changed (save for the doubling of both the private rented sector and average house prices).
Yet Dame Barker, clearly not tired of speaking to the hand, is back for an encore.
Her plea for Government to bridge the North-South divide by providing every citizen with decent transport, schools, hospitals and digital access comes ahead of the much-trailed industrial strategy. Barker’s independent strategy commission wants ministers to tackle Britain’s regional imbalances by committing to universal basic infrastructure.
And she’s right.
But like a former band member going solo, she’s refusing to play the old classics. Not once does this new report talk about building homes. Without proper consideration for where – and how – people will live, how can we really address the divide?
Cities like Leeds have worked hard to set out their visions for growth, supported by a vast network of academic and financial institutions. The success of Manchester and Birmingham in attracting investment has similarly demonstrated that Britain is far more than a city state. Yet, in spite of modest efforts to devolve powers, Britain’s powerbase remains woefully tilted away from the regions.
This is despite efforts by George Osborne who, some may recall, commissioned his own industrial strategy review just five years ago.
While the Tories love to go round in circles, one thing they don’t seem to like is consistency. The last three business ministers have taken vastly different approaches to British industry while Lord Heseltine – in charge of Osborne’s 2012 review – went on to brand the scrapping of regional development agencies (RDAs) as a “mistake”.
This matters because any meaningful infrastructure needs to be delivered at the kind of scale far beyond any single authority’s capability. While Labour are haplessly threatening to nationalise everything, we need a sensible solution for delivering transport as a solid base onto which many other things could be built.
Ambitions such as decarbonising the economy won’t happen without tough decisions. And with the laughable debates we still have over the green belt, few of those look set to be taken in this Budget.
Looking for instance at properly investigate land value capture so that new housing around transport hubs can help fund schools, energy centres and broadband is a must. Considering how the global hunt for yield might make any new, publicly-funded high speed rail connection across the North a hot ticket for institutional investors seems obvious. This doesn’t mean a bottomless pot of reckless borrowing – it means cultivating a plan to harness investment which companies like ours would wholeheartedly support.
Just as quality housing has been crucial to stemming brain drain across Manchester, so it will be crucial for Leeds, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow. This underpins our strategy of creating a £2bn portfolio of rented apartments aimed at city-loving professionals. If we – like many other businesses – are prepared to make such significant investments using private capital, it’s only right that this government step up to the plate.
Barker’s commission called for a new quango along the lines of the Office for Budget Responsibility, but this would only reinforce the current problem of over-centralised power. Listening to Hezza and reinstalling RDAs would be a start, but shifting up a gear and realising we need to listen in stereo to the needs of infrastructure and housing would be a real unit shifter next week, Mr Hammond.
