The Week in Housing: is Gove out of the ‘doghouse’?

Good afternoon.

It was a little over a week ago when housing secretary Michael Gove admitted he is still in the “doghouse” with the Treasury and his department’s delegated spending powers had yet to be reinstated.

There’s an overused quip that “a week is a long time in politics”, but it seems apt here given Mr Gove’s media rounds over the weekend, which led to a flurry of announcements that suggest he has indeed been brought in from the cold.

First up from Mr Gove’s department was the news that a new round of the government’s Affordable Homes Guarantee Scheme (AHGS) has opened, with an additional ￡3bn of funding.

The bond programme offers loans of up to 30 years to registered providers to build affordable housing.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) said the additional funding – which was actually announced alongside November’s Autumn Statement – would help to build 20,000 affordable homes.

For the first time, housing associations can also use the scheme to upgrade their existing properties. Providers will be able to apply for loans to cover energy upgrades such as solar panels and carry out building safety works, including the removal of dangerous cladding.

Next in Mr Gove’s sights were what he believes are underperforming councils. He said planning authorities in England’s 20 largest cities and towns will be made to follow a “brownfield presumption” if housebuilding?drops below expected levels.

Every council in England will need to prioritise brownfield development and be more flexible around allowing housebuilding on derelict sites.

The bar for refusing housing on brownfield sites will be made “much higher” for city councils that fail to hit their targets.

Next up are plans for an?expansion of permitted development rights (PDR) to cover shops and offices of any size.

The housing secretary is reportedly cutting the need for shops to have been empty for a period of time before they can be converted to housing.

PDR rules currently allow large commercial buildings to be turned into homes without planning permission. From 2015 to 2022, 73,575 new houses were converted from offices under PDR.

Unlike most developments, where councils ensure a certain percentage of affordable housing is provided, there is no requirement for affordable homes to be provided via office-to-residential conversions.

But the problem with this idea is that a government-commissioned report in 2020 found that PDR often resulted in poor-quality homes that failed to meet space standards.

Mr Gove also promised that?Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions will be banned by the next general election. Sadly?the ban will not come soon enough for me as I was issued with my own eviction notice earlier today.

The housing secretary had previously told Conservative MPs that Section 21 evictions, which allow landlords to evict tenants with two months’ notice and no reason given, could not be scrapped until various court reforms took place.

The Conservative government promised to scrap no-fault evictions in its 2019 election manifesto. In May 2023, it published the Renters (Reform) Bill, which also committed to the policy. The number of people removed from their homes by court bailiffs because of Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions rose nearly 49% in 2023.

Jules Birch, one of Inside Housing’s regulator commentators, pointed out that the housing secretary is also pushing for a “housing moment” in next month’s Budget, lobbying the chancellor for cuts in stamp duty, an extension of the mortgage guarantee scheme to cover first-time buyers with a 1% deposit and a ‘foreign ownership levy’ on international investors who buy residential property here.

However, Mr Birch added: “Mr Gove certainly cannot be faulted for lack of action or for trying to pull all the levers he can, but his announcements add up to rather less than the sum of their parts.

“Tellingly, housing minister Lee Rowley repeatedly refused to answer when asked on the Today programme on Tuesday how many new homes would be produced.”

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