The current Government’s attempts to make housing policy on the hoof will bring no comfort to the vulnerable people who depend on housing benefit, says Nick Raynsford

Where is the Government’s housing policy leading? Listen to ministerial speeches, and it would all appear to be about encouraging house-building, expanding supply and meeting needs. Look at the reality, and it is clear that every housing sector is in crisis, output is not growing, and an alarmingly-large number of people are facing insecurity and homelessness.

So, how has this disconnect between rhetoric and reality come about? Essentially, as I pointed out last month (The MJ, 14 October, 2010), the new Government has continued to behave as though it was in Opposition, chasing headlines and media coverage, rather than facing up to the responsibilities of power.

Its policy announcements on changes to the planning system may have won a few plaudits, particularly from those opposed to house-building, but they have severely damaged confidence in a sector which had been recovering from recession but is now teetering on the edge of a double-dip.

Its cuts to housing benefit may have secured some supportive headlines in the right-wing press, but have alarmed landlords and tenants alike, and fuelled widely-shared fears of social instability as renters are forced out of higher-cost areas.

The ending of social rented housing as we have known it, with savage cuts in capital investment, coupled with the removal of security and steep rent increases on new lettings, has not only shocked most social housing providers and tenant groups, but has further compounded the malaise in the private housing market. For, mixed-tenure development has become, thankfully, a much more common feature of new housing development in recent years, and many private housing schemes have depended for their viability on funding from the Homes and Communities Agency, through Kickstart, Homebuy

Direct or the National Affordable Housing Programme.

Cutting these programmes back has had knock-on consequences for the wider housing market, as well as damaging the prospects of those dependent on a good supply of social lettings.

This inter-relationship between sectors and tendency for policy decisions in one area to have, perhaps unforeseen consequences in others, is one of the reasons why it is essential for government policy announcements not to be made on the hoof, but only after there has been a thorough assessment of the likely effects of the policy.

That is why, traditionally, governments have published Green Papers for consultation, and White Papers setting out the full implications of new policies before proceeding to implement them.

Instead, over the past six months, we have had a succession of ad hoc pronouncements from ministers, many with far-reaching consequences, but with little or no evidence that their potential impact has been properly considered.

The most recent has been speculation from Lord Freud, a minister in the Department of Work and Pensions, about changes to the statutory framework for the relief of homelessness. Reducing the obligations on local authorities for accommodating homeless households may be a convenient way for a minister to try to hide from the unforeseeable financial and social consequences of housing benefit cuts, but it is a grotesque example of making policy without prior consideration of the effects.

Lord Freud, significantly, is not even a housing minister. Even more shocking was Lord Freud’s attack, coming at the same time as his proposal to weaken the homelessness safeguards, on commentators stirring up fears and frightening people.

There is no better way to frighten vulnerable people than to propose removing their statutory safeguards, their security of tenure or their housing benefit. And this is precisely what ministers have been doing shamelessly over recent months.

Against a background of such a mish-mash of unco-ordinated policy pronouncements and swingeing budget cuts, it is hardly surprising that housing is suffering from a crisis of confidence. It has all the feel of a ship heading for the rocks, with the crew squabbling over which charts to use and the captain focusing on some imagined sunlit uplands on a distant coastline.

Not a scenario to give any comfort to those who depend on sound and responsible decision-making, if they are to have any prospect of securing a home suitable for their needs at a price they can afford.

Nick Raynsford is a former housing and local government minister