PRS Political Pulse

PRS POLITICAL PULSE: Q&A 01 May 2024

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THE PANEL

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TIMOTHY DOUGLAS

JAMES CROUCH

Head of Policy and Campaigns, Propertymark Manager, Mortgages Policy, UK Finance Timothy is an experienced policy and communications professional, and he’s skilled in public speaking and delivering lobbying activity across local authorities, Westminster and the devolved parliaments.

He takes the lead on advocacy and communication campaigns as well as interpreting legislation and putting it into easily digestible formats. He currently heads up political engagement activity for the UK’s largest professional body for property agents.

His specialist subjects are housing, economic crime, property agents, energy efficiency and the private rented sector.

Associate Director and Head of Policy & Public Affairs, Opinium James is Head of Policy & Public Affairs at international strategic insights firm Opinium. He leads a team to convert understanding of public opinion and attitudes into actionable insights for those specifically in the public affairs space along with a range of corporate and commercial clients, commonly in the financial services and real estate sectors.

RONNELL REFFELL Manager, Mortgages Policy, UK Finance Ronnell specialises in financial services policy and advocacy. He is currently responsible for leading UK Finance’s engagement with government, regulators and other key stakeholders on buy to let mortgages, and private rented sector issues. Ronnell has previously held various roles at the Financial Ombudsman Service, where he primarily focused on shaping the delivery of fair outcomes for both mortgage lenders and their customers.

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Q&A As a nation we put a lot of emphasis on home ownership.

There seems to be a view that people don’t choose to rent - they do it because they can’t afford to buy.

How can we change that view and how can we make sure we deliver for people who choose to rent?

James Crouch I think this probably was a little bit more balanced from 2016 onwards and the Conservative Party has become more and more reliant on older voters. We basically had a right of centre government for 14 years and it means they are becoming reliant on people who own multiple cars, who own their own home outright, who don’t live in city centres or suburbs or things like this. That just ultimately is the bedrock of their coalition, and they need to keep those people.

One of the reasons politics of the last few years on housing has been difficult is because party conferences aren’t a pleasant experience for conservatives. Younger people have opposed views about priorities in the housing policy space and they have expectations.

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Ronnell Reffell The private rented sector has become an imperfect substitute for many, and a million or so people who live in the sector should probably be in social housing. Then on the other side of that you’ve got those first-time buyers who would love to be able to own a home, but that seems like a distant dream for them.

We are still seeing the repercussions from the lack of replacement of council houses because of the Right to Buy scheme and the impact that had on the ability for those in the social housing or in council housing to meet the aspiration of home ownership.

We need to shift from looking at housing in silos. If you want to address the challenges in the private rented sector, you have to look across the board, you have to look at social housing, boosting supply of affordable housing, and also how you help first time buyers get on the housing ladder.

What are the things that influence peoples’ options and decisions where home ownership is concerned – is it about housing supply?

Ronnell Reffell Increasing supply doesn’t necessarily mean just building more housing, it’s also the use of existing housing. How do we help people live in the types of houses that they’d like to live in as well as in the locations that they want to live in.

I look at my parents as an example here.

My mum would love to move to a smaller house. My dad looks at the cost of stamp duty, estate agent fees, moving fees which could result in costs of 35K to move to a smaller house – it’s not an easy decision for them to downsize and you’ve got over 65s, many whose children have left home, who remain living in large houses.

Are we doing enough to support the UK housing stock environmentally?

Timothy Douglas There is a huge challenge around energy efficiency and we’re not even scratching at the surface in terms of coordination.

Think about terraced property that we’ve got up and down the country, if individual homeowners and landlords are just chipping away at improving the energy efficiency at that property, it’s just not going to happen at scale.

So we’re going to need those councils working together, that sub-regional approach, and that needs to be coordinated by government. Or we just need a national retrofit programme that goes door to door in order to do it. So that coordination is very difficult. But I think the wider point is I’m yet to still see an overall housing strategy from the UK government.

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Q&A What can we do to help landlords who want to keep up to date and manage changes within the private rented sector?

Timothy Douglas When we talk about landlords in the private sector, I think most of us are thinking about capitalism. Whereas we need to bridge the gap here, as a lot of landlords and agents fundamentally enjoy it. They enjoy working with tenants, they enjoy the different tenants and the different types of people they rent to.

So, I think it’s about recommending that landlords review their portfolio. What does their portfolio look like over the next 5, 10, 15 years, because that is massively important in the energy efficiency space – have they taken advantage of any quick wins?

Because that legislation will come back through the UK government. So, I think it’s about future-proofing and sitting down and really planning all that in. It’s going to be massively important.

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Does the data we have access to give a fair reflection of the private rented sector in terms of adherence to decent home standards?

Ronnell Reffell Mortgage lenders won’t lend against properties that are not habitable, but the problem is not every landlord has a mortgage.

So that pressure and that ask of mortgage lenders has to be realistic. We would say that as more and more landlords have gained access to buy to let mortgages over the past 20 years or so, standards have improved in the private rented sector.

Those landlords who do have a mortgage have regular inspections, and mortgage lenders are doing quite a bit already to support standards in the private rented sector, but there is a long way to go.

Lenders are prepared to do more to help improve standards – one of the reforms mooted in the Renters (Reform) Bill is the Property Portal which all landlords will be required to register to. If lenders were able to have access to the information recorded on the Portal and were able to see details about landlords including any sanctions upheld against them, mortgage lenders could use this information while making lending decisions. They could potentially use this to support and reward better landlords while targeting the worst landlords by denying them access to finance without disenfranchising the responsible landlords who provide good housing.

Has housing become too politicised, and what do we the consumer, the public, want when it comes to this space post-election?

James Crouch

Timothy Douglas

I think one of the problems that the political class and policy maker class have had is that they’ve not really defined the problem very well for us consumers or us voters to take a lead from. I would still say that I think Labour’s done a surprisingly good job at vaguely giving the indication that it will do something about housing. But the question is, what is that something?

We have to engage the communities first to be able to understand this by dealing with the issues that already exist within local communities. If residents’ children have a school place, if they have a place at a doctor’s surgery, then communities will be more understanding. It’s back to front at the minute and that can create a negative attitude towards things like building houses.

The holy grail with political agenda setting is you have a problem that’s well articulated and then an argument that says that I’ve got the solution to that problem. And I don’t think they’ve done a very good job at telling people what the problem is. So, when we start talking about what the problems in housing are, and what the public wants, we basically we have as many responses back as there are people.

And then when it comes to building homes, we need more social homes. I think that is the key to improving affordability with the private rented sector. But we need an infrastructure-first approach. The reason why we have nimbyism is because if you can’t get a doctor or you can’t get into your local school, you’re not going to want another 6,000 houses compounding that problem.

What we are looking for is for someone to try and clarify that – I guess the challenge is that there are an awful lot of different problems going on at the same time. But ultimately leadership is what we all ever really want from our leaders.

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