The Coalition is entering a vital period in its term. On Thursday it will outline full details of its housing plan and this will be followed by further details of other major investments under the revised National Development Plan and a strategy to accelerate delivery. A year after the last general election, this work is already late appearing. And whatever the criticisms of the details of the housing plan, the familiar question will be what can actually be delivered.
How should the new strategy be judged? Whatever about the detail, the first job of the Coalition is to show that it is dealing with housing as an emergency. Incrementalism will not suffice.
The amount of State resources being invested in housing is certainly due to rise. But it has become clear that money is not the only challenge - perhaps, right now, not even the most significant one. The central issue is energising the entire State machinery to actually deliver, involving not only Government departments but also local authorities, the planning and courts system and the various agencies involved in housing delivery.
The job of delivery will be complex, difficult and relentless. Much has clearly gone wrong in recent years and there have been costly strategic errors. But there has also been a complete failure of the system to react to the evidence in front of its own eyes that targets were being constantly missed and that the three previous housing plans over the past decade were all manifestly failing.
RM Block
Some of this failure comes down to administrative dysfunction. Some comes down to a planning system where a previous strategy to accelerate delivery went badly wrong – and where legal challenges have led to seemingly endless delay. But some comes down, too, to a lack of political willpower. How else do you explain record homelessness and the lack of real action to speed housing delivery at a time of surplus in the State finances?
True, this Government and its predecessor have had to deal with a much faster than expected rise in the population due to rapid growth attracting people to come and work here and also asylum seekers from the war in Ukraine and elsewhere. Together with the fall in State investment after the financial crash, this has created a huge deficit in housing and infrastructure provision and in many areas of social services.
As much as the detail of today’s announcement will be assessed, so will the messages being sent out by senior ministers about how, practically, housing will be given priority. To work, this will involve upsetting some vested interests and making difficult decisions on trade-offs. It will also mean being honest with the public. The housing crisis has been years in the making. It will not be fixed quickly. But to get wider public acceptance for yet another housing plan, the Coalition will need to persuade voters that this time, in terms of delivery, it really will be different.
