More housing should be the priority, not an afterthought

IT IS obvious that the Grenfell Tower fire has not yet had any influence on the Government’s housing policy. Even prior to the disaster, Theresa May’s pledge to help those “just about managing” proved to be hollow.

Instead of awarding contracts for HS2, she should have brought in plans for a homebuilding drive. An indication of how critical the housing crisis has become occurred last week when Conservative MP John Redwood sponsored a debate in Parliament on the supply of homes.

His worry is that the shortage of homes has caused a decline in home ownership and he fails to see how a supply of cheap and affordable homes to rent is the best way to reverse that decline.

In his response, housing minister Alok Sharma defended the 2017 housing white paper but there was hardly a mention of building more homes to rent. It seems the Government has favoured people who want faster train journeys over those who want to be able to afford their own homes. YOU say the “best” borough is the one where house prices rise by

4.9 per cent and the “worst” is the one where house prices fall by

3.44 per cent [“House prices up just 0.5 per cent this year with falls in 10 boroughs”, July 18].

When housing provision is viewed in this wrong-headed way, it is no wonder we can’t solve the housing crisis across our capital or country.

RICHARD Godwin’s piece on the successes of historic local authority housing programmes [“Towers of strength”, July 14] was a timely reminder of the quality and humanity that was once a basic standard of public building procurement .

The article touched on another key issue: technical competence. The buildings featured would have been commissioned during a period when local authorities maintained well-resourced departments of qualified and knowledgeable staff. Not all buildings were designed by them but they were on hand to assist and oversee the activities of external consultants.

In the rush to make savings and to open up building procurement to new ideas, the majority of London boroughs decided to bring in people with little project management experience.

It would be interesting to learn from the leaders of various councils — as they contemplate the expensive re-fit of buildings acquired through these “lean procurement” routes — whether they might have been better served by having solid, technical expertise to call upon during the decision-making process.