‘We shape buildings’ and the government fail to deliver them

Yesterday Michael Gove announced the government’s long-term plan for housing however developers have claimed ‘much more decisive action is needed’.  

Taking to the stands in Parliament, Housing Secretary, Michael Gove, delivered his speech on how the government aims to fix the current housing crisis that has seen thousands of people go without a roof over their head or forced to live in unsafe and poor conditions as the cost-of-living continues to climb.

Mr Gove began his speech by quoting a well-known line from Winston Churchill: ‘We shape buildings, Winston Churchill argued, and then they shape us’, giving the impression authorities were about to produce a strong-willed, concrete plan to help with housing, alas industry experts and the general public were left disappointed.

One of the main areas for focus that the Levelling Up and Housing Secretary pointed out was that going forward, the government plans to create more homes in cities by converting empty retail premises and betting shops into flats and houses. However, the Local Government Association has warned that these types of spaces are often of poor quality.

The government have no space for errors when it comes to producing low-quality homes as the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in December last year is evidence of the tragedies that can occur when families are left in barely liveable conditions.

To speed up big developments, the government will invest £24m to train up planning authorities. Half of the funding is newly allocated, while the other half will come from the department’s existing budget.

In addition, there will also be £13.5m for what it calls a ‘super squad’ of planners to unblock certain projects – a development in Cambridge will be the team’s first task.

However, Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, Anthony Browne, is attempting to shut this idea down.

Cllr Browne recently tweeted: ‘I will do everything I can to stop the government’s nonsense plans to impose mass housebuilding on Cambridge, where all major developments are now blocked by the Environment Agency because we have quite literally run out of water.’

As well as focusing on delivering more homes, Michael Gove placed emphasis on helping to restore the environment by not building so much on rural areas and protecting green belts. So plans to build more homes in an area struggling for water is ironic.

Overall the government’s long-term housing plan has 10 principles.

These include:

• The regeneration and renaissance of the hearts of 20 of our most important towns and cities
• Supercharging Europe’s science capital
• Building beautiful – and making architecture great again
• Building great public services into the heart of every community
• Communities taking back control of their future
• Greener homes, greener landscapes and green belt protection
• A new deal for tenants and landlords
• Ensuring that every home is safe, decent and warm
• Liberating leaseholders
• Extending ownership to a new generation

The announcement came as Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, insisted that his party will meet its commitment to building one million homes before the next general election.

Although, a report by the Commons housing committee earlier this month exposed that whilst ministers are on track to deliver its one million homes target, they’re not expected to meet their other commitment to deliver 300,000 new homes every year by the mid-202s.

After the long-term housing plan was unveiled, the National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations, deemed Mr Gove’s policies to be a ‘positive start’ but ‘nowhere near the scale or ambition that is needed.’

Image: UK government and Ivan Henao