Property forum delivers strong message on housing crisis
In the week we learned that 140,000 homes are being considered for Gloucestershire, an expert debate in Cheltenham heard how, if elected, Labour will tackle the housing crisis head on with 1.5m homes.
Dear Readers,
We hope your week is going well. Welcome to your Thursday edition of Raikes.
If you are a regular reader you will know by now we usually paywall out Thursday and Friday editions, meaning only our paid-for members can get sight of the whole of the email - and that if you want to enjoy the main article too you will need to join them.
If you do so you will be helping support this community interest company and making possible the journalism we deliver dedicated to Gloucestershire, committed to championing our county’s businesses, the third sector, education and training.
Today we feature another fantastic expert insight piece from one of our founding partners, all about growth. A massive thank you to Simon Merrell, of Merrell People.
And for the main read we go to town on a hugely popular event staged by Gloucestershire Property Forum, which took place at The Old Courthouse in Cheltenham this week.
On the day Labour announced plans to build big if it gets into power, in a week where it emerged the county council has been exploring options for 140,000 new homes in the county, and with a general election announced, a panel of property experts laid bare the housing crisis. Some of its insight goes right to the heart of Labour’s election pledge - that ‘change’ is coming to the UK.
As for that paywall, because this event was supported by one of our Founding Partners, Willans LLP, we’ve decided to keep the paywall off - for now (the edition will automatically paywall after two weeks).
Remember - if your business is in the GL7 postcode, nominations for the Cirencester Business Awards 2024 close tomorrow (we’ll remind you again below too)!
Got a story idea? Please send it to andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk. Or telephone 07956 926061.
* Everything you read on The Raikes Journal is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and Randall & Payne; our sponsors Hartpury University and Hartpury College; our Founding Members and all our wonderful paying subscribers. If you upgrade to paid too, you’ll be able to see beyond the paywalls we place on many of our second and third email editions of the week and that lock our archive after two weeks. You will be able to view our rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series, comment on our stories and you’ll be helping to make possible this community interest company dedicated to supporting the county, its businesses, charities and education and training providers — all for just £2.30 per week!! For commercial opportunities visit our About us page or email andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk.
Some expert insight: How to design a development programme for growth
Growth is often closer than you think. One or two different questions, a slightly different focus or approach, and it could be there for the taking, writes Simon Merrell of Merrell People in his latest article in our Expert Insight channel
We’ve published another expert article we think you would be interested in, especially if you are looking at growth, and especially if that is personal growth - the kind that will help you drive your career or business forward. Simon Merrell of Merrell People, one of our founding partners, looks at how you can design a development programme to achieve all that. Fear not, if you ask the right questions it could be closer than you think, he suggests. Read the full article right here.
Your Thursday briefing notes
📈 We’re playing catch-up with a few of the Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire stories, the series we put together tracking the financial fortunes of the county’s biggest firms by turnover. All of which is in our Reports & Deals channel, sponsored by Randall & Payne. Here’s one on property giant Bruton Knowles, which saw profits and turnover fall marginally, but remains confident about the future. Read the story here.
💪🏽 If you didn’t read Monday’s edition of Raikes you’ll have missed our article on a property developer that’s probably invested more money than any other in Gloucester explaining why it’s about to spend even more – in particular in the Believe in Gloucester Awards. Gloucester BID is bringing the awards back this year for the first time since 2019 – by popular demand – and Peel L&P, part of Peel Group, the creator of Gloucester Quays, is backing them as co-headline sponsor with WSP Solicitors. You can nominate just who you think should be in the running right now. Read the story here.
🎉 This is the latest in an ongoing and quite incredible achievement that will leave a life-saving legacy in its wake. Defibrillator machine number 79 was installed in The Wheatsheaf, Old Bath Road, Cheltenham. These are the machines designed to restart the human heart. It is a collaboration between businesses and generous donors in the town, driven by the energy and determination of Clare Seed, of Tidal Training, founder of the Purple Hearts Defib Campaign. You can find out more via Seed’s post on Linkedin here (note the exciting comment from Bob Holt, a long-standing support of the campaign).
🥂 There’s a lot of talk about business groups driving things along nicely in Cheltenham and Gloucester, but less talk about what goes on in the Forest of Dean. That could be about to change. The Forest of Dean Economic Partnership has appointed a new marketing and communications expert, Deborah Flint. It’s also signed up Natalie King LLB MBA PgDip, of the AccXel construction school in Cinderford, and Julie Tegg of Gloucestershire College, which of course has a campus in Cinderford as well as Gloucester and Cheltenham. You can read more here.
🏆 If your business or organisation is within the GL7 postcode area you have until tomorrow, Friday 24 May, to enter the Cirencester Business Awards 2024, run by the town’s chamber of commerce. Shortlisted entries will be announced on Wednesday 12 June and the awards themselves presented on Friday 5 July 2024. All category winners will automatically be entered into the Cirencester Business of the Year category. Find out more here.
Property forum delivers strong message on housing crisis
In the week we learned that 140,000 homes are being considered for Gloucestershire, an expert debate in Cheltenham heard how, if elected, Labour will tackle the housing crisis head on, with 1.5m homes - and no one will stop it.
On the day Gloucestershire Property Forum staged its panel debate on the housing crisis, and heard from homeless charity Shelter on the issues facing millions UK-wide, house-building as a big issue also hit the national news.
This was Monday, the day Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, confirmed that if elected her party would build 1.5 million homes during its first term – whole new towns - using compulsory purchase powers, with schemes forced to include 40 per cent affordable housing.
It was news that came hot on the heels of the revelation that Gloucestershire County Council has been exploring how to build 142,400 new homes in Gloucestershire by 2050, which caused particular alarm in the Cotswolds where those plans earmark the district for 23,000 houses.
Cotswold residents whose blood pressure rose as a result will not have found any comfort in the words of Christopher Young KC, of No5 Barristers’ Chambers, also a panelist at the property forum event.
Neither would it have helped that a general election was announced just two days after he spoke, with Labour’s reponse coming in the form of one word – that it would deliver ‘change’.
“The simple fact is when Labour come into power, and it will be Labour, they will build more houses,” said Young, a barrister and expert in planning law and who acts for many of the largest housebuilders in the UK and small and medium-sized developers too.
“There has been talk for years of 300,000 houses a year, but we are building only about 200,000.”
The former advisor to the Conservative government revealed to the packed room at The Court House, Cheltenham, that he could speak clearly about Labour’s intentions because he had been in conversation with the shadow cabinet.
But what made him so convinced Labour would also follow through and and meet the illusive 300,000 a year figure when years of Conservative Government had failed?
“The Conservatives have not been willing to tackle building on green belts or building bigger schemes because these are usually developments that affect the people who vote for them. Labour will not have that problem,” said Young, who lives in Prestbury.
Going right back, even to Gordon Brown and Tony Blair’s governments, housing had not been a priority, he added.
“The simple fact for me is that we don’t build enough houses and the problem is planning,” he said.
“We need to stop listening to the nimbys (those opposed to housebuilding in their locality). Just stop listening to them.”
Chairman David Jones, of planning experts Evans Jones, gave the example of the kind of issues housebuilders faced, citing the 350-dwelling development by Miller Homes in Leckhampton.
The scheme was approved by Cheltenham Borough Council after developers met numerous technicalities around solar panels and air source heat pumps.
But 100 letters of objection from residents drew the attention of the then Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove, who called in the approved plans. A decision more controversial than the development
He was later forced to concede the scheme should go ahead, but it had set the development back 18 months and added more cost.
When new developments of this kind worked well, said Young, communities were able to capitalise and gain valuable new facilities – schools, surgeries, sports facilities, shops.
He gave the example of Leckhampton Rovers, which was awarded £350,000 by Tewkesbury Borough Council under a section 106 agreement, which enabled the club to raise a total of £1 million to revamp The Burrows Fields in Leckhampton, creating four football pitches, a cricket pitch and a new pavilion.
This was just part of the wide-ranging debate for members of Gloucestershire Property Forum that was preceded by an address from Alasdair Garbutt of Willans, which sponsored the event, and who had brought along one of the firm’s long-standing clients, housing charity Shelter.
Alison Rush, strategic lead for Shelter in Bristol gave a short introduction to its work, and outlined the very human cost of the UK failing to deliver on housing.
The debate that followed was summed up by panel member Kate Davies, CBE, of Buena Ltd, as “a great discussion across politics, the housing emergency, social housing, the PRS (private rented sector), land and planning issues, net zero and air source heat pumps, nimbys and the green belt.”
It was, said the former chief executive of London-based Housing Association Notting Hill Genesis: “No holds barred - and good to cover a lot of ground with professionals from so many different companies.”
It was a discussion that began with a simple question: Is there actually a housing crisis?
Nick Devonport, managing director of CGT Lettings, one of the panel members, summed it up in simple numbers to show just how much the market had changed.
“I started as an office junior when I was 16. That was 1990. Our register then was about 200 to 300 homes. Good estate agents today will be running 28 to 29 properties. That’s about 10 per cent the total of the early 1990s. True, interest rates were not tough, regulations were not as fierce.
“But there is good news. We have seen a 12 per cent increase in properties at the top end and sales are up 13 per cent on the same time last year. It is attractive out there.”
Davies reflected on the part public sector, housing association and affordable housing had to play in the issue – and the changes that sector had seen.
“I come from a world of social housing. When I was married I got my first flat, a council flat. There was an oversupply of social housing back then.
“But since then about two million homes have been sold and not replaced. There are about one million people on the waiting list now, but probably two million households in need of this kind of housing.
“In one simple statistic you can see why there’s a crisis. There is simply a real shortage of affordable homes. For a lot of people the future holds only despair.”
Young added: “Governments talk about 300,000 homes a year, but 1969 was the last time we built 300,000 homes a year. It was actually a figure (Winston) Churchill came up with after the war. Last year we managed just over 200,000.
“I am not against right to buy. But what we should be doing is replenishing the housing stock.”
Panel member Simon Firkins, managing director of Cheltenham-headquartered experts SF Planning, said: “I agree that to an extent there is a massive problem with the planning system.
“But I am afraid I think national housebuilders are part of the problem as well. I don’t think the way we run things in this country tends to help smaller and medium-sized housebuilders succeed.
“In the late 2000s 39 per cent of homes were built by small to medium-sized developers. Now it is about 10 per cent.
“A lot of the bigger housebuilders buy land and can afford to hang onto it, which stops it being developed.
“They can fight objections, but the cost - and a complicated planning system - means small firms are squeezed out.
“If these smaller businesses were encouraged to be more involved I think you would actually get more and better homes too.”
Perhaps, suggested Firkins, a return to regional decision making on planning (something removed by The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004) would give planning authorities more power to drive through decision and result in more joined-up thinking.
So the drift towards where the UK found itself was, the panel seemed to agree, because no single government had put housing top of their agenda, with the current government removing targets for house-building all together.
“I do not know why people have not been protesting in the streets,” said Davies “I do think if they got together, mobilised, it would help to put it back onto the agenda.”
And what of the rental sector?
“During my lifetime the rental profession has had meteoric growth, but if I am to believe the press landlords are awful people who should be banished from the earth?” said Jones, posing another question for the panel.
Devonport, whose business looks after thousands of properties across the country for landlords and tenants, was deeply skeptical of rent controls and more legislation as a solution.
“Landlords are generally very good people.
“There is a trap many get into where they try to deliver below market rents because they want to be loyal to loyal tenants, and as a result there can be an issue with maintenace.
“The tenant wants to raise it, but they don’t want a rent rise. The landlord wants to raise the rent, but doesn’t want to face the maintenance issue.
“And then if a tenant does leave, getting back into property when the market rate is higher than they were used to proves challenging.”
There was also concern about the ‘misconception’ that the short-term rental market as awash with unmanaged Airbnb properties and needed regulating too.
“This (Airb&b) is probably the wrong name for it. We handle lots of short-term rental properties for tents and possibly less than one per cent is Airbnb.
“The rest - the majority - serves a vital purpose; for those who need a short-term place to stay, for reasons of work, of crisis, like divorce, because they are moving back into the country.”
But if the UK moves housebuilding up the agenda, restores targets, makes the planning system more efficient, remove barriers to building, and was there really any evidence there would be an impact?
“If you look around the country there is a shortage of supply. The more regulations the government puts in place the worse the situation becomes,” said Young.
“Tewkesbury is a good example and one of the few places where lots of houses have been built and the impact was prices came down – by only one per cent, but they came down.”
Fixing all the issues it had outlined to encourage more housebuilding would not be enough, with the panel acknowledging the attention would then turn to resources in the housebuilding sector itself.
“We have an ageing population of construction workers and an oversupply of male technicians and under undersupply of carpenters, for example. Why are we not showing these roles to women. Half of the population has been ignored,” said Davies.
Despite some disagreements on detail and on emphasis, there was no disagreement from the panel on the central premises of the afternoon’s debate.
“I don’t think any reasonable person could argue there isn’t a housing crisis,” said Firkins, after the debate.
“The event being so well attended, and the depth of the discussion, demonstrates the level of interest and strength of feeling around the subject.
“Emotions around new development, especially for housing, are often highly charged.
“Amongst the many, significant, and often unnecessary challenges created by the current system and how it operates, I was encouraged by the optimism for how things will change; and change they must if the crisis is to be addressed in any meaningful way.”
At the end of the debate Davies was left with the same feeling.
“Overall, I am more optimistic that I have been for a while,” she said.
But with an election now fast-approaching, and Labour riding high in the polls, perhaps it is Young’s words that will resonate longest and loudest.
“Things will change. They will, and they will change quickly,” he said.