There a few things that I always try to be in my blogs – optimistic, realistic, fair and apolitical. But today, I am going to break one of my golden rules and applaud (loudly) David Cameron for his speech at the Tory party conference. Well, one part of it – at least.
I think I was actually clapping louder than Pickles when he came to the section on the Tory-led “housing revolution”. At last, we have a PM that has woken up to the nation’s housing crisis and is prepared to do something about it.
In fact, it seems he is quite prepared to make some enemies in the process. His line – “To those who just oppose everything that we’re doing, my message is this: take your arguments down to the job centre. We’ve got to get Britain back to work” – will stick with me for a long time. And it’s not often I can say that of a Party Conference speech.
You see, Cameron’s right. If the Government steps in now and does what it takes to get Britain’s new homes industry moving again, we will reap the rewards.
As things stand, we don’t have enough homes to house our population and this is going to get worse as the years progress. So, the sooner the PM intervenes, the sooner we, as an industry, can start building more – and the less chance there will be of another property boom caused by housing demand far outstripping supply.
This means less people will be homeless and living off the state by the end of next decade, reducing the pressure on the country’s already stretched coffers.
On top of that, the more homes we, as an industry, build – the more people we employ and unemployment, as we know, is one of Cameron’s most pressing concerns. He can’t afford to pay out any more on benefits than he is already, thanks to the enormous debt he has to tackle.
If you add the money that could be raised through stamp duty – and VAT on household goods etc – to Cameron’s spreadsheets, you can see why he isn’t afraid to lose a few friends over this one.
By backing the calls to build more new homes, he can prevent homelessness for thousands, reduce state expenditure on benefits, vastly reduce the chances of another housing bubble and raise £millions in taxes.
The question now is how he can lift us out of the “mud of our planning system” of which he spoke. He has promised us a housing revolution – now he needs to find his revolutionaries to push all this through.
Cameron, on this one at least, you can count me in.
Sue Warwick – National Sales & Marketing Director, Miller Homes
