Church leads call for national housing strategy

Foremost among the recommendations of the Coming Home report was to create a long-term, cross party, national housing strategy. The housing crisis has been decades in the making, and it cannot be ‘solved’ in the lifetime of one parliament. Indeed, the absence of a long-term strategy has contributed to some short-sighted housing policies by governments on both left and right that turned out to be ineffective or counter-productive.

Early in 2023, the lead bishop for housing drew together a small steering group in the House of Lords to explore how a national housing strategy might be developed. The group included a Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem and Crossbench peer.

In partnership with the Nationwide Foundation, the steering group convened a high-level round table which included MPs and policy makers from the main parties, along with leading figures in the housing sector.  Following these conversations, an executive team was set up, led by David Orr, one of the Commissioners behind Coming Home. They joined forces with the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence to write a report, published this month as Homes for All: a vision for England’s housing system.

Speakers including Sir Vince Cable, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and housing minister Baroness Kay Swinburne commended different aspects of the report at the launch event in the House of Lords.

The report recommends the creation of a 20+ year strategy, which, crucially, should be bookended by a clear vision of what a good housing system looks like, and by a statutory housing committee – akin to the Climate Change Committee – to hold successive governments to account, including monitoring and reporting on progress.

The next step is to build cross-party support for this long term vision, strategy and governance mechanism to transform England’s housing system.  Homes for All argues that any strategy should include all the main tenures, to address the concerns and aspirations of people who are homeowners, private sector tenants and people in social housing.

Tthe housing crisis will not go away by itself. Without a clear vision for what good housing looks like for all the different types of household, and a roadmap for turning that vision into reality despite the many obstacles and challenges, our children and grandchildren will still be confronted by a lack of decent, affordable housing in 2050.