Something borrowed...

On 17 november 2003, Baroness Brenda Dean received a call from David Curry, then the Conservative housing spokesman, requesting an urgent meeting. He had spent the previous weekend devouring the report the homeownership taskforce, chaired by Dean, had published just four days before. Curry told her A Home of My Own tackled a number of areas that interested the Tories.

The meeting took place a week later and Dean, formerly chair of the Housing Corporation, says she never heard anything from the Conservatives again.

One year on, the Tories – the self-avowed party of homeownership – have catapulted the issue to the top of the political agenda with the launch last month of their housing policy, The Right To Own (HT 29 October, page 8). The three main parties are now trading blows over how best to help voters who want to own their own home: 90% of the non-homeowning electorate according to polls. Having commissioned Dean’s team, Labour should have had a solid base on which to build its policies. Instead, it seems the opposition parties have been whipping ideas from under the government’s nose, leaving the future of the taskforce’s plans in doubt.

So what has Labour been doing with Dean’s 45 recommendations? The ODPM responded in May and claimed it had “accepted the majority in full and action is already in hand to implement them”. But as far as Dean is concerned, the government has swept the key issues under the carpet.

“I felt at the time that the return [by associations] of receipts raised through shared homeownership was a critical point,” says Dean. “In the year that has passed since we published the report, it remains the major issue and very much needs to be addressed.”

She continues: “It is not surprising that housing associations objected so strongly. However, it is sad that this looks very unlikely to be taken forward by the government. This means you will not have the funds to deliver the new-build homes that are necessary to increase shared ownership.”

Although the government has adopted some measures on the right to buy, Dean is “disappointed” that nothing has been done to get more low-cost housing through planning gain – the system whereby developers promise to build social housing or community facilities in return for planning permission – or to introduce more flexible arrangements to allow people to buy incremental shares in their homes.

The other issue Dean and her 20-strong team had wanted to tackle is encapsulated in a quote from a Leicester buyer, which Dean used to open the report: “It [home-buying] all seems so complicated – couldn’t things be made simpler?”

Dean says: “Sadly, I don’t think this has happened and, as a result, the public is being left uninformed.” Labour is certainly aware of the vote-winning potential of simplifying the buying process, particularly for first-timers. At the party conference in September, deputy prime minister John Prescott announced a competition for housebuilders to provide two-bedroom homes built for as little as £60,000. The contest would be run by English Partnerships and the homes would be sold for much less than the average market price of £179,201. Although this is welcome, Dean feels it is a drop in the ocean.

She would have preferred the Housing Corporation to be given a role as champion of shared homeownership and to use its network of influence throughout English councils and housing associations to spread the word about a new streamlined shared-ownership system. The closest the ODPM came to this in May was to agree to the taskforce call for the corporation to set up a “dedicated website for sustainable homeownership”. This has yet to happen.

It is interesting how much of the taskforce report the Conservatives have adopted.

It would be wrong to raid the report for homeownership ideas and neglect its message

Adam Sampson, Shelter

A glance at the sources for The Right To Own suggests they came up with their own ideas: there is only one reference to the report. Of the Tories’ 10 action points for housing (broken down in “Who says what”, above), half were proposed by the taskforce. Four of these were rejected by the ODPM.

A Tory spokeswoman said: “Even if there are apparent similarities between what we have proposed and the taskforce report, what we have put forward are not just the points raised. We have presented a whole pallet of proposals around homeownership.”

As for the Liberal Democrats, the only similarity to their most recent policy statement, published in February, is the name A Home of Your Own. But the party is publishing updated housing and planning policies next January. These are likely to revolve around homeownership and giving tenants an “equity stake” in their homes – ideas flagged up in the taskforce’s report.

So are the Tories on to a winner borrowing ideas from an ODPM-commissioned report? The sector’s reaction would suggest not. The National Housing Federation slammed the proposals as “deficient in addressing critical housing shortages” while the Chartered Institute of Housing said the document would “marginalise the least well off … while enabling the best off to buy homes”.

However, Adam Sampson, director of homelessness charity Shelter and a member of Dean’s taskforce, thinks the Tories could be onto something. “The taskforce produced a good set of proposals that I would like to see adopted by whatever government as they would be beneficial for society.”

But he adds: “It would be wrong to simply raid this set of proposals for those that concentrate purely on homeownership and neglect the central message of the report, which was that the provision of social housing not be compromised.”

The Conservatives will publish a second policy document before Christmas. This will examine housing supply and demand, so perhaps the party will take that opportunity to redress the perceived imbalance. It would not be a great surprise to find within it evidence that the homeownership taskforce has once more made its mark.

The general election may be as little as six months away and, for Dean, the path Labour must take is clear. “I would hope in making all his speeches about empowering people, the prime minister will recognise there is a choice around [shared] homeownership that people know nothing about.

“If people don’t have the information to decide, how can that be choice? The simple answer is, it is not.”