Their housing legacy is the strongest for a generation and more than 750,000 homes were built during their term of office with final figures to be released in the coming months.
According to Natalie Elphicke, chief executive of The Housing and Finance Institute, it is wrong to assume that Theresa May has inherited a full blown housing crisis and that not enough homes being built.
‘It is true we have some serious housing challenges, but it is also a fact we have made some extraordinary steps forward since David Cameron and George Osborne took control of the tiller in 2010. For two politicians perceived to be masters of spin and presentation, they failed to sell their ground breaking housing achievements while in government,’ she said.
‘But they really did preside over record breaking house building, a reformed planning policy and a package of reforms that leave our housing industry in a much stronger position than when they took office six years ago. Cameron and Osborne’s is the strongest housing legacy of any government for over 35 years,’ she added.
She believes that Osborne put housing at the heart of Britain’s recovery and growth strategy, committing over £38 billion of public money into the sector and says this is a scale of public finance housing support that has not seen since the post war era.
‘Financial commitment has been matched by root and branch reform across all parts of government which impact on housing, planning, public finances, local government finance, local government powers and the government’s entire public land estate,’ she explained.
A key part of their programme was giving back control to councils and Elphicke explained that a recovery which worked for everyone needed to devolve power to find local solutions. This included money, direct access to billions of pounds which could be borrowed directly by councils for housing, growth and community building through the Housing Revenue Account settlements and Prudential Borrowing.
‘There has been wholesale reform of planning through the introduction of the National Planning Policy Framework. This is helping councils and housing businesses alike understand what housing is needed and where. Action has been taken on empty homes, on better utilisation of existing social housing stock and on keeping Britain building,’ she pointed out.
The HFI has identified the flagship Help to Buy scheme as a key driver to their success. Often misanalysed as a demand side boost, the original Help to Buy scheme was a supply side boost to address the immediate challenge that volume house builders faced, which was that new buyers did not have the higher deposits necessary to secure a mortgage after the credit crunch.
The Help to Buy programme ensured that builders had the confidence to continue to build new homes, knowing that the homes were within the reach of buyers, according to Elphicke. ‘These root and branch reforms of housing are working. Britain has more fuel in its housing tank than at any recent time,’ she said.
‘Planning permissions are at an eight year high with over 475,000 in stock at the beginning of 2016. Over 200,000 additional homes have been added to the council tax base in the year to March 2016. There are fewer empty homes than at any time since records began,’ she added.
The HFI says Cameron and Osborne can also be proud of their record on social housing. They oversaw the only net increase in the number of households in social housing of any of the last five governments. The last two full reported years to 2015 saw the highest numbers of households in social housing for more than a decade.
More than 750,000 homes have been built during their term of office already, with final figures to be released in the coming months. House building starts are more than 100 per cent above the low point of March 2009.
Speaking of what now needs to be done by the new government, Elphicke said that new chancellor Philip Hammond will need to steady the global financial markets and continue with Help to Buy and other interventions.
‘The previous government had dipped a toe in the water for building directly commissioned by government and was supporting the development of construction and other skills academies, encouraging off-site manufacturing, re-invigorating estate regeneration and nurturing the return of smaller builders,’ she explained.
‘To counter the short term Brexit impact, the new government will need to accelerate the pace of change for these critical areas,’ she concluded.
