Latest news with #MatthewPennycook
Telegraph
22-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Labour's new towns ‘threaten local democracy'
Labour's plans to build hundreds of thousands of homes in new towns across the country risk stifling local democracy and eroding public trust, experts have warned. Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, has signalled that each new town is likely be governed by a development corporation to ensure projects progress beyond the current parliament. Development corporations are organisations created by the Government or regional officials to oversee large-scale developments, often regeneration of former industrial areas. They can be led by ministers, metro mayors or local authority leaders. Boards are often appointed by central government or other authorities, rather than being elected by the people who are potentially most affected by their decisions. Mr Pennycook's comments have raised concerns that people living near the sites of proposed new towns will not have a say in the decision-making process. Miriam Levin, a director at Demos, a cross-party think tank, said the proposals risked a 'democratic deficit where decision-makers are not directly accountable to the local population, and aren't subject to the same level of scrutiny that residents expect from their local authority'. While new towns are 'much needed' to address the nation's chronic housing shortage, she warned that development corporations 'could pose a risk to democratic accountability'. Ms Levin said: 'Existing communities and newcomers need to be involved in the shaping of new towns from the outset. The risk of citizens' voices being marginalised, is [where] communities feel like developments are being imposed on them. This reinforces the doom-loop of loss of trust in politics and political institutions.' The National Association of Local Councils (Nalc) said its members 'must be at the heart of [the] process' and said there should be 'local democratic representation from the outset'. Mr Pennycook said during a parliamentary session last week he 'very strongly' felt there 'must be a role for local voice in whatever delivery mechanism comes forward' and said ministers 'want as much local buy-in as possible'. However, he told the built environment committee that ministers 'wouldn't hesitate' to take forward sites deemed to be in the national interest, even if they face a major backlash from local communities. 'Citizen participation' His comments follow a vow from Sir Keir Starmer to '[take] on the Nimbys' to boost economic growth and prevent them from blocking major infrastructure projects. Ms Levin said: 'The new towns programme offers a huge opportunity to enable radical forms of citizen engagement, co-design, community and self-build models, and long-term stewardship in the creation of new places. 'Development corporation models should be deployed to enable citizen participation, not to stifle it.' Around a dozen areas will be earmarked for the first wave of new towns and major urban extensions in a taskforce report, set to be sent to ministers within the next few weeks. Some are expected to be built on greenfield sites. A spokesman for the Nalc said: 'Where parish and town councils already exist, they must be fully involved in shaping and delivering the new town, and their role must be respected and empowered throughout the process. 'If delivered in a fair and balanced way, with full consultation and engagement with communities, new towns can help meet housing targets and create sustainable, thriving places. 'Ultimately, successful new towns will be those built with communities, not just for them.' A spokesman for the Local Government Association said: 'We are facing a housing crisis, and councils have a key role to play in addressing this challenge. 'It is vital that any governance model for new towns is underpinned by strong local democratic accountability, ensuring that councils and their communities have a central and meaningful voice in shaping local areas.' New towns that were built by development corporations include Milton Keynes, chaired by Lord Campbell of Eskan. Sir Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, is pressing on with plans to create a mayoral development corporation to pedestrianise Oxford Street, a decision that has prompted a backlash from Labour-run Westminster City Council as it torpedoed two years of work on its own £90m project to improve the area. A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesman said: 'The Government was elected to build the next generation of new towns and, as set out in the manifesto, will work in close partnership with local leaders and people to make sure they are high quality, affordable and built with excellent infrastructure that communities will need. 'Local people will be given a say on how they are built, but as the housing minister set out last week, if sites meet objectives to meet housing demand and improves economic growth they will be taken forward in the national interest.'
New Statesman
22-07-2025
- Business
- New Statesman
This government will live or die by housing
Photo byAfter a summer break, Labour want to take on Britain's 'dysfunctional' housing and land markets. They want to make them fairer for those who want to buy homes to live in and less of a boon for 'speculative' investors. And although Labour's much-awaited long-term housing strategy will not be published before recess, Housing and Planning Minister Matthew Pennycook has hinted that if year one was about laying the groundwork for Labour's housing plan, year two will be significantly more radical. It is a testament to the functionality of Pennycook's department – the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) – that it rarely makes headlines in the way that, say, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) or Treasury do. Between them, Rayner and Pennycook have delivered on manifesto commitments by tweaking legislation in a quietly radical and efficient way. The Renters' Rights Bill will soon become law. Similarly, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill is paving the way for urgent planning reform, which, though not radical for some because environmental considerations must still be factored into planning approval, will make clever tweaks to existing frameworks for delivering development, such as beefing up the compulsory purchase powers of public bodies to stop the sale of land for development at inflated prices. Leasehold reforms, similarly, have been amped up, and there is reportedly more to come. With legislative changes that former Tory Housing Secretary Michael Gove wanted but could never get through his own party, Pennycook wants to step things up and reform the housing market once and for all by 'addressing the financialisation of housing', and 'ending our overreliance on a speculative model of development that… constrains housing supply.' Punchy in theory, so how will it work in reality? Ministers are exploring ways to give people who want to buy homes to live in them, as opposed to as an investment, an advantage. This could include implementing rules that stipulate new homes can only be sold to local people who will live in them, as Cornwall Council have done to protect hard-won new housing developments and prevent new housing being sold to investors. Labour have suggested that they will similarly protect homes in their new towns. Developers who buy up land, obtain planning permission to build, but then, instead of actually building anything, sit on the land and wait for it to rise in value, will be penalised and blocked from planning permission in the future. The sites for a 'new generation' of around a dozen new towns, like those built post-war, have also been plotted on a map to be announced imminently. Pennycook is determined that these will be built out quickly and purposefully. Ministers are thought to be considering giving Homes England more regional power so that it can be involved in planning at a local level, ensuring that the right homes are built in the right places. New towns will also be overseen by development corporations with their own governance structure, taking some decisions away from local councils and putting them in the hands of bodies specifically tasked with getting things built. These public bodies will be able to invoke the new rules on compulsory purchase to get hold of land cheaply and build homes and infrastructure on it. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Rayner and Pennycook need to get this all over the line, and fast. The stakes couldn't be higher. Labour will be judged harshly on whether they can be bolder and go further than the governments of recent decades, who presided over an increasingly dysfunctional housing market and did little to nothing. But, more importantly, there is now not a single part of Britain which is not impacted by this country's sclerotic housing market. Since the 1970s, house price-to-income ratios have more than doubled nationwide, pricing younger generations out of homeownership, ushering in 35- and even 40-year mortgages, and trapping nearly 5 million households in an expensive and unstable private rental sector. That's more than the number living in social and council housing, which not only provides secure and affordable homes but also provides a return for the state through rent. None of this is new. The housing crisis was fast becoming one of the defining issues of modern life when Labour lost to David Cameron in 2010. But the situation is worse than it ever was. Week after week, new lows are reached. Housing makes headlines for all the wrong reasons. Rising homelessness is now such a grotesque new normal that it rarely makes a front page. So is the increasing number of homeless families, and, at last count, 164,000 children who are forced to live in temporary accommodation. That's anywhere from a hotel to a converted office block and, even, a converted shipping container. And, of course, these bleak statistics don't capture the misery of the people who can afford their rent, just as long as they don't put the heating on, let alone contemplate a holiday. They also don't tell the story of the anguish of young adults who can't afford family-sized homes, or who still live at home in their twenties and thirties, and those whose mortgages have recently jumped up due to higher rates, swallowing chunks of their disposable income in the process. The human suffering caused by expensive housing and homelessness also has an economic impact. Housing costs consume ever-larger amounts of public money. A rise in the number of lower-income households relying on private renting has meant that the Housing Benefit Bill is predicted to rise to £35bn by 2028. That's more than the total spend of many government departments. Temporary accommodation now costs councils £2.3bn a year. As the Chartered Institute for Housing has pointed out, these expanding bills mean only 12 per cent of government spending on housing in 2022 went towards new buildings, compared to 95 per cent in 1976. High rents and mortgage costs, relative to income, also mean that young people today, who are less likely to be homeowners than their elders, are spending disposable income that could be contributing to growth through either the consumption of goods and services or investment on their homes. In the end, those who do the reading draw the same conclusions about what William Beveridge described as 'the problem of housing' in this country back in 1942 – affordable housing is the only way to prevent people becoming homeless and unwell and, in doing so, reduce the pressure on the state to support them. Before he backed down on housing reform and bowed out, Gove had realised this. He started to talk about the problem that the impact of extractive 'rentier economics' was having in Britain. The phrase was not a borrowing from Gary Stevenson, let alone Friedrich Engels. Downstream from Adam Smith via Thomas Piketty, Gove said it during a 2024 interview with that leftie rag the Financial Times. The Tory grandee correctly identified that Britain's housing crisis would be the death knell for his party because younger generations were at the sharp end of it. After all, why would any young person vote Conservative if they have no assets to conserve? However you slice it, the housing crisis is emotionally and financially draining us all. Economists (like Smith and latterly Piketty) have pointed this out for centuries. Labour knows that fixing housing will be key to their electoral survival. But, more than that, they know that it is the right thing to do. With one year down and four left of Labour's first term, the clock is well and truly ticking. After all, imagine a baby born into homelessness, to a family with one bedroom emergency temporary accommodation when Labour entered Downing Street last year will be five and in need of space to grow and do homework and play in no time at all. [Further reading: Immigrants did not cause Britain's social housing shortage] Related
Times
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Times
We won't let residents block big new towns, says planning minister
Residents will not be allowed to block development of large-scale new towns, the planning minister has said. Matthew Pennycook said he was ready to drive through big developments over local protests if he judged they were in the national interest as part of plans to build hundreds of thousands of homes in new towns. About a dozen areas will be chosen soon for the first wave of new towns and Pennycook told peers last week: 'I do not think that local opposition that says, 'We do not want it here' can be the test.'Sir Keir Starmer has promised to 'take on the nimbys' to boost growth and ensure more people can own their own home; a generation of new towns is central to Labour's housebuilding ambitions. • Why Labour is failing to build the homes Britain needs About 100 areas have been suggested in England and ministers will be handed a report within weeks recommending the first areas to be developed. Starmer has cited the King's traditional approach to architecture, based on local materials and terraced homes that harmonise with the landscape, as a key inspiration for new town designs. Pennycook told the Lords built environment committee he wanted each new town to 'have its own character', adding that his 'aim is to ensure that each new town has a very distinct identity' that will 'evolve organically' over time. 'I would like to see that identity reflected in the designs that are taken forward that reflect the uniqueness of a place that is being created,' he said. 'What are the local materials that you might use [that are ] very specific to a particular place?' Pledging that new towns would not be 'identikit versions' of each other, he said local design rules would ensure each one was unique. Labour has pledged to build 1.5 million homes over the parliament, a goal that requires a doubling or more of present building rates. Pennycook acknowledged new towns would be completed too late to help hit this target but would provide 'hundreds of thousands of homes in the decades to come'. Each will have a minimum size of 10,000 homes but Pennycook said some towns would have 'housing numbers far in excess of that 10,000' and were likely to grow over time. The postwar new towns that have inspired Labour's plans often proved controversial, and Pennycook acknowledged some residents would object to development. Stressing that 'we do want local communities to see these as positive developments' and be involved in planning, he said: 'Fundamentally, and we have been very clear on this point for obvious reasons, we will take the decisions about sites in the national interest.' He said that if his new towns task force recommended building a new town on an appropriate site that would provide homes and boost the economy, 'the government would not hesitate to do so against some opposition — and I think there will be opposition in these cases — if that is in the national interest'. He said ministers 'have made the decision to stand behind a new wave of new towns because it is a fundamental means of meeting housing demand'. Housebuilding has fallen to record lows; only 184,390 homes were completed last year and 132,460 started. Pennycook acknowledged that 'we are in a trough', which he blamed on 'the dire inheritance' of Conservative abolition of local housing targets.
Daily Mirror
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
Fury at minister's flippant 'get on with it' comment in tense housing grilling
Housing minister Matthew Pennycook has been confronted after it emerged homes might not be brought up to a decent standard for another 10 years - despite dozens of children's deaths A housing minister has been confronted after it emerged homes might not be brought up to a decent standard for another 10 years - despite dozens of children's deaths being linked to their living conditions. Matthew Pennycook said the Government had taken "urgent action" to introduce Awaab's Law, which will force social landlords to deal with health hazards like damp and mould. But it was pointed out that an updated 'decent homes standard' may not be enforceable until 2035 at the earliest. Florence Eshalomi, a Labour MP and chair of the Commons' housing committee, hit out at Mr Pennycook after he said the last Labour government - some 15 years ago - also had a 10-year timeline, and suggested they weren't told to "get on with it". She told Mr Pennycook we "cannot compare" now to then, as she said the "situation is getting dire on a daily basis". Appearing at a committee hearing, Mr Pennycook was at first grilled by Labour MP Sarah Smith, who asked him about the slow enforcement of the decent homes standard. She said: "It's been made public that this might not be enforceable until 2035 or 2037. We have had 72 children die due to their living conditions between 2019 and 2024 so why would there be this delay. "Why are we not pushing as quickly as possible to make every landlord responsible for making sure that the homes families are living in in this country, while they await the progress of this building programme, are fit for human habitation?" Mr Pennycook said Labour was committed to "delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation". He said it wasn't "unusual" for the implementation of a new decent homes standard, on which is being consulted, to take time. He added that the last Labour government's decent home programme had a 10-year implementation timeline. The minister said urgent action had been taken to help people living with "acute hazards", by introducing Awaab's law, which subject to parliamentary scrutiny will come into force in October. "And that will require landlords to address significant damp and mould hazards and emergency hazards within fixed periods." He added that "there's no way" you could ask for an updated standard to be implemented within a year. But Ms Smith hit back: "Perhaps not within a year, but to be waiting 10 years seems extreme, given the money that is being made in this sector... Surely there could be greater urgency than 2035." When Mr Pennycook went to repeat his previous point on Awaab's law, chairwoman Ms Eshalomi interjected to ask him whether local authorities would have the capacity to carry out inspections to check landlords were sticking to the law. The housing minister said the law was bringing in a "significant change", with residents able to hold landlords to account by taking legal action. He added: "We're going to raise standards across the board, through an upgraded and modernised decent homes standard. On the timelines, as I said, the previous Labour government's decent homes programme... I don't think anyone at that point in time would have been saying, 'we think you just need to get on with it'." But Ms Eshalomi hit back: "We now have a situation where we have almost two million people on the housing waiting list. We've seen local authorities spend £2.29 billion. I don't need to read these figures to you. "The situation is getting dire on a daily basis. We cannot compare it to when the last Labour government (were in power). We keep saying we're in a housing crisis. There are issues with in temporary accommodation. Unless we do things differently, Minister, we're going to keep spending money as a sticking tape on this." Mr Pennycook said: "We are doing things differently. I think I've evidenced that we are doing things differently." Awaab's Law was first introduced and consulted on by the former Tory government. It is named after two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died in 2020 from a respiratory condition caused by mould at his home in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.
Times
07-07-2025
- Business
- Times
Leasehold reform delays leave homeowners in financial limbo
Almost three in five leaseholders are struggling to sell their home as they wait for government ministers to deal with high maintenance costs. An Opinium survey paints a stark picture of financial and personal insecurity among leaseholders, with 58 per cent of respondents reporting that their ability to sell their home has been hampered by onerous clauses and maintenance costs. A staggering 77 per cent saw a rise in service charges in the past year — of whom 24 per cent experienced an increase of more than £1,000 a year. Planned reforms include improving the section 20 'major works' process to prevent leaseholders from being hit with large, unexpected bills without notice. Leaseholders will also gain the power to demand a switch or veto a landlord's choice of managing agent. Additionally, mandatory qualifications will be introduced for managing agents to stamp out bad practice and poor service. Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, says: 'The cost of living remains a pressing concern for leaseholders and many are struggling financially as a result of high and rising service charges, and other opaque and excessive leasehold costs.' • Read more expert advice on property, interiors and home improvement Harry Scoffin, founder of Free Leaseholders, the campaign group that commissioned the Opinium poll, thinks Whitehall is taking too long to change the status quo. Some of the proposals, such as giving leaseholders the power to switch managing agents, were recommended in a report by Lord Best as long ago as 2019. Scoffin says: 'The government appears to be going slow and tinkering at the edges, burying us in consultations and hiding behind the judicial review 'lawfare' by the freeholder lobby. 'As the Opinium polling for Free Leaseholders shows, leasehold is treading heavily on people's lives, robbing us of control over our finances, denying us the freedom to sell up for better opportunities and sabotaging our plans to start a family. The stress of being looted in a home that you believed you bought and own by a landlord you never thought you'd have is intolerable.' • Who are the 'shadowy' lobbyists trying to save leasehold? The poll highlights how leasehold is impinging on fundamental life decisions, with 43 per cent of the 1,000 leaseholders surveyed stating it has impacted their ability to start a family, and 55 per cent their ability to move to a larger property. Younger leaseholders (aged 18-34) are disproportionately affected, with 73 per cent in this age group feeling unable to move to a larger home. Jo Cullen, a 33-year-old leaseholder who lives in an east London block of flats, believes leasehold issues have brought her life plans 'grinding to a halt'. Her five-year plan to build a family is out of reach and she can no longer afford to freeze her eggs due to the legal costs involved in battling service charges. She doesn't even know if she can sell her flat while in litigation. Cullen has been battling with RMG, the agency that manages her block of flats, ever since she bought her one-bedroom home in 2020. 'I don't feel as though I've even started to settle in. I've just been playing whack-a-mole the whole time,' she says. The Labour government has yet to deliver on a promise to abolish forfeiture, in which the freeholder can seize the property if the leaseholder breaches their lease agreement. Cullen says RMG has threatened her with forfeiture 'in every other correspondence I have with them'. Most of the other leaseholders in her building are foreign investors, making it difficult to connect with neighbours who share similar issues. She's on anti-anxiety medication and her pre-existing seizure condition has worsened. She feels she's 'just drifting in kind of in limbo' and is 'not the same stable functioning person that I was before'. • My neighbour won't pay her share of the block's service charges Cullen has faced tribunal proceedings against RMG over alleged non-payment of service charges — she claims the charges are highly inconsistent. In the first case, RMG dropped its claim, and a second claim was also dropped, due to an admin error made by RMG. She is now awaiting the outcome of three additional cases that have led to court proceedings. Under leasehold rules, she is still liable to pay RMG's court costs. Government reforms will scrap the presumption that leaseholders have to pay their landlord's litigation costs when successfully challenging service charges. In response, RMG said it recognised that debt collection could be 'distressing', but that service charges fund essential services. An RMG spokesman told The Times: 'We do not recognise the wider accusations made and are encouraging Mrs Cullen to work through our formal complaints processes so her concerns can be investigated thoroughly and fairly.' Meanwhile, Alan* still can't sell his flat in Newcastle upon Tyne due to an onerous ground rent clause. A pensioner in his eighties, Alan has not yet pursued a deed of variation to alter the ground rent due to the high cost and the expectation that the situation would be abolished by the government. He has contacted his MP multiple times but received no feedback on the issue. 'I think there must be strong lobbying by influential freeholders,' he says. Alan bought his leasehold flat in 2017 believing the lease terms were standard, as advised by his solicitor. 'It was only when a neighbour wanted to sell six years later, and he couldn't, that I had to dig into all of this,' he says. His previous leasehold flat had a ground rent that escalated in line with the retail price index (RPI), which he considered acceptable. His current lease, however, has a five-year escalation formula indexed back to the RPI in 2017, meaning it increases cumulatively and will eventually exceed the value of the apartment. • Can we claim adverse possession of the freehold of our house? He pursued a case with the legal ombudsman due to a lack of advice from his conveyancing solicitor, and it found that none of the 20 apartments in his building were properly advised. Alan is a member of the National Leasehold Campaign, which has about 33,500 members on its Facebook group, and he believes the leasehold system is unfair and exploitative. He says, 'It's not economically generating anything, except some income for people who don't do anything to deserve it.' The government's consultation on restricting ground rents for existing leases was launched in November 2023, but ministers still haven't published the outcome. The government has also pledged to make lease extensions cheaper by introducing a standard formula to work out how much it will cost. Currently, it is up to the freeholder and includes 'marriage value', which increases lease extension costs once a lease drops below 80 years, impacting mortgageability. Mark Tomlinson, 59, a former bank employee who was made redundant during the Covid pandemic, can't sell his two-bedroom flat in Sunderland unless he pays about £30,000 to extend the lease. This sum is the same amount he paid for the property in 1992. When he bought the flat, there were 67 years remaining on the 99-year lease, but Tomlinson assumed he would be offered the chance to buy the freehold eventually. Tomlinson has experienced great distress from the tenants who live either side of him. 'It would be a never-ending cycle of noise, dogs barking, dog excrement all over my garden and taunts from the tenants when passing them in the street,' he says. This prompted him to sell the flat, but then he overheard a conversation among his neighbours about lease extension costs, prompting him to research online. None of these implications were explained by his conveyancer at the time of purchase, Tomlinson claims. With 34 years remaining on the lease, Tomlinson estimates he'd have to drop the price by at least 30 per cent of its current market value to sell the property. Even a quick-sale property company wasn't interested in buying it. Tomlinson bought a run-down two-bedroom house nearby to live in instead and is now a reluctant landlord. 'The flat is like a ball and chain. I don't want to be a landlord but I don't want to give it away either.' * Last name withheld
