Archive for April, 2009

Where do you go mon after you have soaked up the rum and the sun in Barbados, limed with the locals and watched West Indies cricket captain Chris Gayle smash England all over the Caribbean?  To the offices of the Homes & Communities Agency in Buckingham Palace Road, London.

I needed a dose of affordable housing reality, after sampling Moonshine Ridge on Apes Hill in Barbados – a former sugar plantation that makes Royal Westmoreland look common.
In Barbados I had two Caribbean stunners called Trinidad & Tobago - as usual I was left holding the & - serving me champagne and rum. At HCA HQ in SW1 the coffee machine did not work and the sausage sandwiches were low cost and shared equity – 80 percent bread, 20 percent pig.

The HCA delivered 50,000 new affordable homes across England in the last financial year and expects little uplift on that figure next year, given market conditions and capacity, although HomeBuy Direct should start kicking in.

The HCA has an annual budget of some £5 billion. It is not enough. The Government should give this quango – an amalgam of the old Housing Corporation and English Partnerships – another £50 billion now,  on condition it engages fully with housebuilders and makes private/public sector partnerships work and work quickly, helping ailing private developers and RSLs with land, cash flow and risk and committing to build to rent to attract institutional funding.

Private consultants – out of work housebuilders presumably – are knocking down the HCA door to help unlock sites and deliver numbers. Let them in now, providing they know a high viz jacket from a sharp suit and a tool belt from a laptop.

HCA boss Sir Bob Kerslake even said he would look to clear planning bottlenecks and broker Section 106 agreements with local authorities. I think that is what he said, or it might have been too much rum mon.

Sir Bob was addressing the trade in announcing the HCA’s preliminary results. But he needs to educate the public too. On the one hand we have thousands of consumers baffled by all the affordable schemes on offer and many unaware that despite healthy household incomes they could be eligible.
On the other we have a vast government body and housing associations, with a few honourable exceptions, that simply do not know how to sell. Willing buyer, willing seller and never the twain shall meet.

Dig into that huge war chest Sir Bob and commission an advertising agency to put together a very simple national campaign, telling those earning less than £60,000 a year – a sizable slice of the population - they can get on the ladder.

Find a gorgeous young couple called Hugo and Hattie as a case study. To sate the appetites of the tabloids as well as broadsheets, Hugo needs to be an Old Etonian and Hattie must be reigning Hunt Ball Cleavage of the Year. Explode the myths that only chavs on benefit, with kids who find Father’s Day just too confusing, live in low-cost housing. Got to go. Got a date with Ampersand.

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