The defeat of the Government sponsored amendment seeking to resolve the housing logjam caused by the issue of nutrient neutrality in the Lords last week once again brings home the enfeebled nature of the current administration. I had been at a Portcullis House event on Tuesday the day before it went down where I had met the current Housing Minister. A seemingly fairly sensible person, she tacitly acknowledges this administration hasn’t got its head around housing supply. She hadn’t sounded confident about the amendment. At one point she asked all who attended to write to a Lord – you know its bad when you get asked that.
As a brownfield focused developer, I haven’t come across this particular encumbrance but I know many developers around the country who are literally in deadlock. To my eye, whether someone chooses to flush their toilet in a new home or an overcrowded home it doesn’t actually effect the issue which nutrient neutrality tries to address, waste water drainage. Rather than create a second problem, an even more impoverished housing supply; it would have been better administrative politics for our peers to have accepted the amendment in the LURB.
However, I can also see why their Lords and Ladyships didn’t. The Government didn’t consult and was very late to the party. The purists in the Lords were not having it.
There is an issue with wastewater flow. The job of politicians both elected and unelected is to figure out a regulatory regime which makes a bad situation less bad. Sensible legislation or regulation might tackle the problem at source and not disrupt a different and already acutely challenged sector. This is a case study in how far our politics has fallen into deadlock.
Sometimes a quicker fix is needed for the greater good. This is what I believe the amendment to the LURB tried to achieve and why this blog space always tries to support actions which help the economy and housing. It will now need primary legislation which could take years and will almost inevitably damage the nation’s capability to deliver homes.
At the same event, I also brought up zoning and the previous reforms from the Jenrick era (remember him). The Minister sighed with regret, acknowledging this was a missed opportunity and remarked there is no consensus amongst our lawmakers as to what they should be doing for housing. Indeed, the majority of them are entirely ignorant asking the wrong questions bogged down in 20th century ideology which has no place in the modern world.
It’s very clear to me that the real estate sector along with the wider UK business community has failed to help our politicians understand the issues at hand. When things do happen they are too little and too late as is the case with last week.
If we are to build consensus on how to solve the housing crisis we need cross party support no matter who takes over next time and our sector needs to be better coordinated and offer a stronger voice at the table. Better data and sharper arguments that can offer practical reforms is the menu of tomorrow. Otherwise, the next Government, like this one, will stumble on blindly making things worse.
