Blast from the Past

The countdown to redundancy for everyone left in my office now stands at 8 working days. Accordingly, desks are being cleared out and many things unearthed. I have, for instance, found a copy of the FT from April 26th 2010 with an article about 'The Demolition Job that Awaits the Next Government'. With hindsight, it is rather striking.



Apologies for the poor quality cameraphone photo. The main point of the editorial on the left is that £37 billion of savings will need to be found from the public sector in order for the deficit to be halved by 2014. It is noted below the pie chart that all three political parties have failed to identify anything like that level of cuts in their announcements to date. Incredibly, of the three it was the Conservative party that had at that time announced the smallest level of cuts. £7 billion a year, to be precise.

The FT's modest proposals for cuts were as follows:

• Axe two aircraft carriers, which has not occurred.
  
  
• Reduce prison numbers by 25%, which has has not occurred, although Ian Duncan-Smith did entertain thoughts in this direction. Then came the wrath of the Daily Mail, and the riots. Thus the prison population has reached a record high.
  
  
• 5% cut in public sector pay for a year, which has not occurred, as the FT high-handed assumed that central government could just do this whenever they wanted. Which wouldn't be very localist, frankly. Public sector pay has been frozen, though, and with inflation running at 4.5%, that amounts to a cut in real terms. Moreover, there are now 240,000 fewer jobs in the public sector than there were last year.
  
  
• Means test child benefit, which is in progress.
  
  
• Scrap winter fuel payments and free TV licenses. Wow, the FT really cares about the elderly. This hasn't happened and there are no plans to do it. This government is far keener on withdrawing support from the young.
  
  
• Halve spending on NHS dentistry. Here is a rich irony for you, as this is presumably predictated on NHS dentistry being inefficient. It is one of the areas of the NHS run on more competitive, private sector lines. The government is now planning to bring that same ethos to the entire NHS in the health and welfare reform bill. Will the result be cost savings, chaos, worse health outcomes, or none of the above? Who knows - certainly not the government.
  
  
• Stop primary and secondary school building for three years. There is more irony to be found here. Building Schools for the Future was scrapped, and Local Authority budgets cut so that any new schools would need to be developer funded. However, the Free Schools policy will mean more schools coming into being. Is money being saved overall? The Department for Education took a smallish budget cut over the spending review period, so presumably that's the idea.
  
  
• Halve spending on Teaching Assistant salaries. Again, the FT is getting a bit high-handed if it thinks central government can just reach down into schools and fire half of their TAs. That said, many such jobs are probably looking less secure as schools look to absorb funding cuts.
  
  
• Cut funding to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Island by 10%. The government went for 7% overall.
  
  
• Halve spending on road maintenance and upgrades. This takes in two sets of cuts; to the Department for Transport (which is responsible for trunk roads) and to upper-tier local councils (which are responsible for local roads). The former took a 12.6% cut, the latter about 26% cut. A number of planned major motorway upgrades have been ditched and many local authorities have cut their pothole budgets. Whether this amounts to halving spending is hard to tell.
  
  
• Delay Crossrail for at least three years. This has not happened; Boris managed to save Crossrail from the axe.
  
  
• Withdraw concessionary fares for pensioners. The FT does seem to have something against the elderly. This has not happened and is unlikely to.

Abolishing the Child Trust Fund and Education Maintenance Allowance were also mentioned in the article - both of which are happening.

That amounted to £37.4 billion cuts over four years. In the Comprehensive Spending Review the government announced £83 billion cuts over four years, more than twice as many. Quoth the FT on April 26th 2010:

Spending cuts on the scale outlined in the Financial Times' analysis appear too politically risky to contemplate

Excuse me while I laugh bitterly. The FT proposed instead to raise income tax and VAT. The coalition have done the latter, but also cut or frozen the budgets of all government departments. Significantly, they have laid particularly hard into the welfare state, which the FT treated as sacrosanct.

What a change in just over a year. I suspect that the 'political risk' the FT mention was simply steamrollered by shock and awe tactics. The public sector must be cut immediately or the country will run out of money and citizens will have to start eating one another! (Only a slight exaggeration of the Spending Review rhetoric.) I think the FT underestimated people's apathy and lack of awareness of what the public sector does. Few protest when told that a government department's funding is being cut by 20%; it just seems like a number. When that means a fall in income or the closure of a local service, complaints start. By then, it is probably too late.

Titans Will Clash

Hostilities have erupted between The Telegraph and the Department of Communities and Local Government. The former has launched a campaign against planning reforms in general and the draft National Planning Policy Framework in particular, called Hands Off Our Land. Or as I like to call it Not In Our Back Yard. CLG seem to feel the need to respond in terse, aggressive fashion to their every article here, here, here, here, and here. I pity the poor civil servant required to write those.

Frankly, this is a war I hope they both lose. Each side is as prone as the other to making sweeping, alarmist statements without such fripperies as evidence, for example:

75,000 HOMES TO BE BUILT ON ENGLAND'S GREEN BELT!

PLANNING DELAYS COST THE ECONOMY £3 BILLION A YEAR!

At the heart of this acrimonious dispute lies the paradox of modern Tory conservatism: free markets versus nostalgic protectionism. At the moment it appears that the government favours the former and local government the latter. This of course reduces a complex and nuanced issue to black and white, but such is the current tone of the debate.

Pickles and co have been insisting that localism will cause all areas to embrace development, against experience on their doorsteps. The Telegraph has spotted the disjunct here and pounced. Notice the obvious subtext here, that people want localism in order to prevent development.

The draft National Planning Policy Framework has caused this storm. Apparently the fact that the Localism Bill isn't actually that localist wasn't widely noted, but the presumption in favour of sustainable development is pretty unequivocal. George Monbiot is outraged about it; he doesn't often agree with the Torygraph.

I continue to think that both sides are partially right but mostly wrong. The planning system is too complicated and does need simplification. However the Localism Bill makes it more complicated, and ignores the fact that most people will only get involved with it if there is a specific proposal nearby that they want to prevent. And that is perfectly rational! In these austere times, few want to spend ages debating community projects unless there is some hope of them happening. People should be encouraged to get involved in planning, but not obliged to.

Without doubt, the draft Planning Policy Framework doesn't give a clear enough definition of sustainable development and puts far too much emphasis on economic growth. The presumption in favour of sustainable development is hugely risky. Outside greenbelt land, it will become extremely difficult for local authorities to refuse planning permission. If they do, appeals are likely to be granted. However, I don't think most people are staunchly pro- or anti-development; it is the job of the planning system to determine which development is right within limited available space. Importantly, the draft framework should make it much easier to get planning permission for wind turbines, something that fills The Telegraph with dread and me with delight. Meanwhile Yougov polling suggests that, if anything, the electorate in general are confused and apathetic about the whole thing (pdf).

I noted in July that the draft planning policy framework had not got very much media coverage. That has definitely changed. Neither Team Pickles (and their allies the British Property Federation et al) nor Team Telegraph (and their allies the National trust et al) seem open to compromise. With engaging hyperbole, the planning reforms have recently been described as political suicide and even a recipe for civil war. The fight can only get dirtier and, hopefully, more entertaining. For once local government isn't directly in the firing line, so excuse us whilst we sit on the sidelines and have a little schadenfreude party.

The More I Read The Less I Know

England has suddenly exploded with rioting. It's happening as I type this. One of my friends has been evacuated from her flat because a police station down the road was petrol-bombed. It is grotesque and terrifying that law and order can break down so quickly and comprehensively, that so many people suddenly resort to violence and looting with seeming impunity. It is genuinely difficult to comprehend the seriousness of what is happening. The last riots of any comparable scale happened before I was born.

I've been following the media and twitter coverage closely. The Guardian, Telegraph, and BBC have impressively thorough 24 hour feeds, delivering a stream of images and anecdotes to illustrate the mayhem. The sheer shock and horror at rampant arson, vandalism, and theft naturally breeds an urge to understand why. Why is this happening? How has it escalated so dramatically? And why now?

The impression I've got in the last few days is that it is simply impossible to answer those questions at the moment, and attempts to do so are largely interesting for what they reveal about the commentator. As ever, the wider the generalisation, the more likely confirmation bias is to be at work. Compare for yourself:

Two utterly different views from the Telegraph: Philip Johnston and Mary Riddell.

Camila Batmanghelidjh in the Independent

Richard Littlejohn in The Mail

Nina Power in The Guardian.

For international flavour, Doug Saunders in the Canadian Globe and Mail

From bloggers: Penny Red, Winston Smith, The New Economics Foundation, and Rosamicula on livejournal.

The main point of difference between commentators seems to be the allocation of responsibility; society vs individual and state vs market. Despite this it has surprised me to what extent there is overlap, despite variations in tone. Bringing party politics or even distinctions between right- and left-wing into consideration of the riots seems somewhat artificial, and has happened in the press less than it could have done. The violence is more sudden and uncontrollable than anyone expected, right or left wing, and it is therefore difficult to explain with standard right vs left political narratives. There seems to be more use of such narratives on Twitter, probably due to its inherent difficulties with complexity. Nuance cannot adequately be conveyed or statements properly qualified within 140 characters.

Speculation is rife as there is simply very little data at the moment. We don't know who the rioters are; images in the news suggest predominantly poor teenagers, but there are also reports of adults. We don't know how many there are. We don't know the full extent of what they've done and may still do. Most importantly, we don't know their pretexts for embarking on this illegal, destructive, dangerous course of action. Factors that have been suggested include: rising inequality, weakness in the penal system, amoral individualism, family breakdown, lack of trust in the police, endemic unemployment, consumerist popular culture, drugs, failures of the education system, lack of respect for authority figures, cuts such as the abolition of Education Maintenance Allowance, absence of aspirations, and violent video games. All of these and more could apply; the foolish thing at this point would be to rule anything out for ideological reasons.

It would of course be very convenient for my personal opinions if I could blame the riots solely on the coalition government's cuts and wider economy-centric, rather than people-centric, policy making. But there isn't enough evidence to support or undermine that view. I believe that those two factors are significant, however I could be wrong. For something this big and bad to happen, there cannot be a single simple explanation. Once the police have re-established order and the dust has settled, it should become clearer why the riots occurred, and then we face the more difficult task of doing something about it. The mindset and circumstances that led people to riot will need to be tackled somehow, otherwise there is bound to be more violence to come.

[insert planning related pun here]

As the Guardian pointed out today, there is just too much news at the moment. Too many tragedies, unfolding economic disasters, and environmental catastrophes, as much of the deluge of news is bad. Something that hasn't had much coverage, however, is the draft National Planning Policy Framework issued yesterday. I can see why it hasn't been afforded a lot of notice, but this document is very important indeed. It will have a vast influence on how the UK's built environment changes, or does not, over the next few years.

One of the government's stated aims for CLG has always been to simplify the planning system. Ministers decry the huge volume of planning guidance, which runs to thousands of pages and represents to them so much red tape. This is to be replaced by a single National Planning Policy Framework, which will set out simply how the government wants planning to work. Everything else will be delegated to local and/or neighbourhood level, regions having been abolished. Rationalising reams of guidance on a large number of specific issues (for example, transport, flood risk, and telecommunications) into a single, simple document was never going to be an easy task. This explains why the national framework has been repeatedly delayed.

Now we finally have it, and it runs to a mere fifty-three pages plus glossary. This is certainly much more convenient than all that it replaces, and students of planning law will be delighted to find their reading lists reduced in such a radical manner. The framework provides a neat summary of the issues that 21st century planning has to grapple with. (With the exception of gypsies and travellers, who aren't mentioned at all. Presumably acknowledging them was considered too contentious, and their needs were assumed to be tacitly included in planning for housing requirements.) For the most part, existing guidance is rationalised, for example the flood risk and retail policies. However, there are also some very significant changes. In short, NIMBYs beware, you're in for a scare.

The primary role of the planning system is now explicitly to deliver sustainable development, defined as meeting economic, social, and environmental needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. The long-promised 'presumption in favour of sustainable development' is set out, and rather heavy-handedly the following is added, 'significant weight should be placed on the need to support economic growth through the planning system'. It could be argued that this turns the role of the planning system from plan-making to getting out of the way.

The government harps on about increasing people's control of planning, but this presumption will do the opposite. Councillors would find it very difficult to refuse planning applications, and even harder to win appeals against refusals. When your local plan is outdated, refusing an application would only be possible if 'the adverse impacts of allowing development would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits, when assessed against the policies in this Framework taken as a whole'. More significantly, even if an up-to-date plan is in place, the presumption in favour of sustainable development still applies and must be taken into account. Neighbourhood plans will not be able to block development, only to propose more of it. The whole system is being reweighted in favour of planning applicants.

Local plans will also need to be based on objectively assessed needs, requiring 'proportionate' and integrated evidence on housing, economic development, infrastructure, and the environment. It is significant that the last goverment's housing targets were below the assessed housing need. Also, the housing section of the framework flatly states that, 'The Government's key housing objective is to increase significantly the delivery of new homes.' This is reinforced by the further statement that, 'Local Plans should be prepared on the basis that objectively assessed development needs should be met, unless the adverse impacts of doing so would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits.' Ergo, more housing development, especially in places with poor affordability.

I don't want to give the idea that the new planning world will be a complete free-for-all. Local plans will still be able to specify restrictions on how land is used or whether it is developed, as long as there is evidence to support this. How much of a free-for-all actually ensues will depend on how these two adjacent clauses are balanced in practise:

'The planning system is plan-led. Therefore Local Plans, incorporating neighbourhood plans where relevant, are the starting point for the determination of any planning application.

'In assessing and determining development proposals, local planning authorities should apply the presumption in favour of sustainable development.'

That is where planning lawyers will be spending many billable hours in years to come.

Meanwhile, allocations of land in Local Plans will need to be viable and deliverable, whereas currently they merely have to be deliverable. I think this terminology change means that local planning authorities will have a harder time getting financial contributions from developers - when those contributions are subject to viability. To get technical for a moment, the Community Infrastructure Levy (when implemented) is like a tax on development and developers cannot negotiate it down if their development seems less profitable. However, the proportion of affordable housing in a housing development is subject to viability, and where the line is drawn depends on case law.

So planners will now have to determine from the outset whether sites 'provide acceptable returns to a willing land owner and willing developer', taking into account contributions to infrastructure and affordable housing. This is incredibly difficult and would I suspect make it easier for developers to argue down levels of affordable housing. Or perhaps not, as plans must also be based on evidenced need, and there is plenty of evidence that affordable housing is needed around the country. (As an aside, case law suggests that 'acceptable returns' for a developer are currently around 20% profit on costs. Supposedly they can only get bank loans if such high returns can be demonstrated.)

The framework would seem to make it much more difficult for local planning authorities to refuse planning permission on the basis of factors like poor design, impact on traffic, or inappropriateness of siting. However, lest the shires start to panic, 'The Government attaches great importance to Green Belts.' The draft framework assumes that new buildings in the green belt are 'inappropriate' and should not be allowed except under 'very special circumstances'. Interestingly, such circumstances include development approved by micro-referendum under a Community Right to Build Order, which would be permitted as long as it preserved the qualities of the green belt.

Personally, I am very interested in the effect that the new planning context will have on the delivery of renewable energy. Broadly I think the framework could improve the situation, although this is by no means certain as there are several policies that would interact. Firstly:

'When located in the Green Belt, elements of many renewable energy projects will comprise inappropriate development. In such cases developers will need to demonstrate very special circumstances if projects are to proceed. Such very special circumstances may include the wider environmental benefits associated with increased production of energy from renewable sources.'

Depending on how 'very special' case law deems the global threat of climate change to be, this could be used to prevent renewables on the green belt. Which, lest we forget, covers 13% of England. However, elsewhere in the framework it is stated that:

'local planning authorities should recognise the responsibility on all communities to contribute to energy generation from renewable or low-carbon sources,' and

'When determining planning applications, local planning authorities should apply the presumption in favour of sustainable development and:

• not require applicants for energy development to demonstrate the overall need for renewable or low-carbon energy and also recognise that even small-scale projects provide a valuable contribution to cutting greenhouse gas emissions; and

• approve the application if its impacts are (or can be made) acceptable. Once opportunity areas for renewable and low-carbon energy have been mapped in plans, local planning authorities should also expect subsequent applications for commercial scale projects outside these areas to demonstrate that the proposed location meets the criteria used in identifying opportunity areas.'

Notably, the government has dampened the pro-renewables language in the earlier independent practitioners draft of the framework (that they comissioned), which stated that:

'When determining planning applications, local planning authorities should [...] not presume against energy development outside mapped areas nor require applicants for energy development to demonstrate the overall need for renewable or low-carbon energy or question the energy justification for why a proposal for renewable and low-carbon energy must be sited in a particular location.'

I think the effective difference is that local planning authorities are being given the chance to plan pro-actively for renewables, but also potentially constrain where they are developed. There is thus the possibility that very limited space could be designated by lots of local planning authorities, adding up to a woefully insufficient national renewable energy supply. That said, until local planning authorities actually set out such pro-active policies, the presumption in favour of sustainable development would apply. Moreover, it would seem to still be a strong consideration once plans are in place, likely resulting in a high rate of success at appeal.

I do feel sorry for planners. They must be under enormous pressure to get their local plans in place and up to date as soon as possible, to forestall all kinds of unexpected planning applications, whilst also being required to involve as much of the community as possible, even if the community are reluctant and the provisions of the Localism Bill still in flux. As plans must be needs-based, a lot of evidence about housing, economic development, and all kinds of infrastructure is urgently needed. Moreover, there's the Community Infrastructure Levy to implement if the local planning authority has any hope of collecting meaningful contributions to infrastructure from development over the next few years. Also forthcoming zero carbon homes requirements, which will force local planning authorities to decide what to do about allowable solutions (a form of carbon offset). Meanwhile, planning budgets are being slashed and posts lost, planners are branded obstructive bureacrats, and local councillors tend to take the government's localism rhetoric at face value. Tough times for the planning profession.

But how can you as a citizen make the National Planning Framework work for you? If I had money to invest, this is what I would do. First, dig through DECC's renewable energy data to find rural local planning authorities with a lot of wind energy potential. Then I'd check which have out-of-date local plans, likely ending up with quite a substantial list. Within those areas, I'd look for agricultural land suitable for wind farms (taking into account buffer zones and other factors set out in the National Policy Statement for Renewable Energy Infrastructure), rent or buy it, then put in planning applications for wind farms. Even if the local planning authority found some pretext on which to refuse the applications, they should be easily won on appeal, thanks to the presumption in favour of sustainable development.

This strategy should yield good financial returns, whilst increasing the UK's renewable energy supply, greatly annoying climate change deniers, and highlighting the vast chasm of understanding between national and local Conservative politicians. The attempts of local councillors to describe wind turbines as economically, socially, and environmentally unsustainable would be entertaining to witness, I suspect. (If you'd like a sneak preview, read this recent appeal decision. Hard as it is for me to say, in this rare instance I agree with Eric Pickles.)

Overall, my opinion of the draft Planning Policy Framework is inconclusive. It could allow rampant poor-quality development and general mayhem, but won't necessarily. A lot depends on the interpretation of the word 'sustainable'. Planning guidance did badly need simplification, and although I don't agree with every facet, this framework is a better start than I was expecting. As ever, the devil will be in the detail. A word of advice, though. If you are genuinely averse to new development and would like avoid exposure to it, move deep into the greenbelt because this new vision of the planning system looks not unlike the Thatcher model of the 1980s. Except, hopefully, with more wind farms.

Stormy Weather

I have a confession to make: I can't bring myself to read the Open Public Services White Paper. Whenever I try and steel myself to pick it up, all I can think of is David Cameron tearing the social contract into tiny pieces whilst laughing maniacally. That is not a pleasant mental image.

Instead, I've read Vince Cable's 2009 book about the credit crunch, titled 'The Storm'. He wrote it in haste to try and explain the causes of the financial downturn, back when the idea of Liberal Democrats in the cabinet would have provoked disbelieving laughter. Reading it with the benefit of hindsight is very interesting.

When I borrowed this book from the library, I thought it would display the vast extent of Cable's hypocrisy once he become a government minister. I was surprised to find that some of his 2009 viewpoints accord quite closely with the coalition's stated programme. The book articulates Liberal Democrat ideology much more clearly than any of their election campaigning ever did. Cable's view is liberal in the old-fashioned sense of the word; pro-markets and anti-state in principle, but agreeing that there is need for a strong legal, regulatory, and fiscal policy basis for markets to operate within. Superficially, this agenda seems to differ from the Conservative Party (who dispute the need for a strong legal, regulatory, and fiscal policy basis, painting it all as red tape) and the Labour Party (who are more pro-state, insofar as they actually invested in public services). That's a vast oversimplification, which credits UK political parties with an ideological coherence that they don't have, but it does point to a certain sympathy between Conservative and Liberal policies. Labour at least pretended to put people before markets.

Cable clearly articulates the need for reduced UK public spending to get rid of the so-called structural deficit (a disputed term, I should add). This is now the coalition's favourite soundbite. He also emphasises the need for stronger regulation of banking. The current government have talked about this at some length; their actions have conspicuously failed to live up to their words. Remember Project Merlin and how banks continue to ignore it? Remember when banks were allowed to pay unlimited bonuses? I don't think that this was what Cable had in mind in 2009. That said, his concern was the need for multilateral reform, given the international nature of the crisis. He has been making the right noises, just without supporting action.

There is a seemingly minor but critical distinction to be made between Conservative and Liberal Democrat economic policy: in his book Cable proposes public sector cuts once stimulus has got the private sector growing; Osbourne's approach is predicated on cuts to the public sector acting as the stimulus. The former nuance has clearly been subsumed under the great coalition carnival of cuts. As I've said many times before, I doubt such sudden and deep cuts will turn out well for anyone, least of all the most vulnerable in society, the economy, and the Liberal Democrats as a political party.

'The Storm' makes it clear that unbalanced housing policy contributed significantly to the economic crisis. Cable notes that the hysterical pursuit of home ownership (influenced by political, financial, and media hype) brought about a destructive house price bubble. To avoid it happening again, a more-balanced housing market with greater proportions of social and private rented property is needed. That is definitely not what the present Housing Minister and his ministry are working towards. Interestingly, Cable suggests that a period of deflation could help to prevent a second property bubble. In 2009, this was a real possibility and deflation did actually occur (if you go by RPI). These days, inflation is above 4% and being driven by food and fuel prices rises over which the government has very little control. Both markets are dominated by cartel behaviour and global in nature, as other chapters helpfully explain.

This book is definitely at its best when looking at the global picture; the rise of China and India as economic powers, the perversity of richer countries borrowing heavily from poorer, and trends in energy and food markets are all summarised neatly. I strongly take issue with the relegation of climate change to an afterthought, though. Nonetheless, 'The Storm' is well worth reading and covers a lot of ground within 157 pages. Ultimately, though, it is fatalistic. The UK is waning as economic power, many contributory factors to the downturn remain beyond UK policy control, and even if we get our domestic policy in order recovery will remain difficult.

Cable sensibly doesn't try and predict the future; he didn't foresee the alarming prospect of Greece, Ireland, Italy, and the US threatening to default on their debts, for instance. Rather, he presents a frankly depressing vision of where things were in 2009 and the main problems that needed to be addressed. It's now 2011 and those problems remain unfixed; rebalancing the housing market, investing in education and research to strengthen the economy, economic rebalancing away from financial services, and promoting fairness by using the tax system to reduce inequality. I haven't seen evidence of the coalition government making progress with any of that, despite frequent name-checking of the latter two aims.

I still think that Vince Cable has acted hypocritically and consider his callous attitude to Southern Cross unforgivable. However all politicians (indeed all humans) are hypocrites sometimes and working in a coalition inevitably requires compromise. The astute analysis in 'The Storm' demonstrates that Cable must realise how ineffective and downright dangerous most of the policies he has to support are likely to be. As the economy stalls, the euro totters, and America seems doomed to be downgraded, I wonder if he thinks such compromise was worth it?

I did find one prediction in the concluding chapter of Cable's book: 'There is a long period of austerity ahead'. It's hard to argue with that.

On The Street

The government has a glorious vision that they will end rough sleeping, a praiseworthy aim that no-one can in good conscience take issue with. The Prime Minister, no less, states in the introduction to their new vision document that,

It is an affront to this country that last winter, one of the coldest on record, there were people still sleeping rough on our streets. While the temperature dropped below freezing, many were making do with doorways and cardboard boxes for beds. In a civilised society, this is totally unacceptable.

How right you are, Mr. Cameron! Moreover, he goes on to say that,

...tackling rough sleeping is not just about providing homes. It is about dealing with the wider causes of homelessness, from family breakdown and mental illness to drug addiction and alcoholism. This is a complex, multi-faceted problem.

Again, very true and reassuring to hear that at the highest level the government understand the complicated nature of the problem. If only this understanding was matched with some idea of the solutions. Set out in the vision document are six cross-departmental commitments to end homelessness. Before I get to them, here are seven actions the government is taking or has taken that are directly relevant to the number of people without homes. None of these are mentioned in the vision document:

1. Radically altering the nature of social housing tenure. Currently mean weekly rent in the social rented sector is £75, less than half the private sector level of £156. The government is introducing a new tenure called 'affordable rent', which by default will be set at 80% of private rent (although theoretically there will be flexibility to set it lower). New and moving tenants will be presented with this exciting new tenure, plus existing tenants may be encouraged to switch. 'Affordable rent' tenancies will also be fixed term by default; currently social renting offers a tenancy for life or until the tenant no longer wants it. All this amounts to making social renting much more expensive and less secure.
   
   
2. Cutting housing benefit in a number of ways (including capping, indexing to a measure of inflation that doesn't including housing costs, and calculating local housing allowance with reference to the cheapest 30% of properties rather than 50%), such that it won't be enough to cover either 'affordable rent' or private rent in many places. This is expected to reduce the government's spending on housing benefit by £1.8 billion. The Chartered Institute of Housing calculated that the changes could price private tenants on housing benefit out of, well, Britain.
   
   
3. Weakening the duty on Local Authorities to help the homeless. Currently if you are homeless and ask your Local Authority for help, they can offer you private rented accommodation but you do not have to accept it. Under the Localism Bill proposals, if you did not accept the private rented option, the Local Authority wouldn't have to help you any further. The devil is in the detail here; how suitable does the offer need to be? What if it is too far from your job, or your child's school? Private rental is also insecure, with assured shorthold tenancies rarely lasting beyond 6 months, prone to volatile rent, and of poorer quality than other tenures.
   
   
4. Cutting Local Authority funding, which impacts both on housing departments and on charities that rely on public sector grants, which form between them the front line of help for the homeless.
   
   
5. Reforming the planning system through the Localism Bill, to remove regional housing targets and introduce confusing new ways of involving neighbourhoods (whatever they turn out to me). The Chief Executive of Taylor Wimpey, one of the UK's biggest house builders, said this of the proposals:
   
   ...can I tell you my great fear? In three years’ time, it all stops. We are operating currently on existing consent and on land banks. We need a flow of consent coming through the process to maintain and grow business. I fear that we will reach a point, in about three years’ time, when what we have currently on the stocks runs out, where in fact we have not got that supply coming through. That is the big challenge. That is the sort of transition [...] which so badly needs to be addressed.
   
   House builders obviously have a bit of a vested interest here, but he also has a good point. There is a shortage of housing in the UK and uncertainty about the planning system will only delay the building of anything.
   
   
6. Cutting the National Affordable Homes Programme from £8.4 billion (2008-11) to £4.5 billion (2010-13, notice the overlap) and stating that it will only be spent on the new 'affordable rent' tenure. This housing will not meet the needs of the most vulnerable and impoverished people, by definition those who are most at risk of homelessness.
   
   
7. Rejecting the conclusions of the Rugg Review, which called for regulation of the private rented section to deal with abusive landlords and substandard accommodation. The review proposed a light-touch system of regulation designed to stabilise the sector and encourage investment. The sector was supportive, but the government labelled it red tape and that was that.

As a result of this combination of policies, affordable housing will become scarcer, private renting remain insecure, social and private rents will rise, and housing benefit will reduce, whilst the Local Authority safety net weakens. The implications are worrying, and the Department of Communities and Local Government is well aware of it. The six-month-old letter recently leaked baldly states that just the changes to benefits will generate more than £270 million of additional costs to Local Authorities and cause 40,000 households to become homeless.

Wait a moment, didn't the Prime Minister say he really wanted to end rough sleeping? Let's look at the government's six commitments to do so.

1. 'Helping people off the streets' by providing £20 million for a Homelessness Transition Fund. If that much money could end homelessness, surely there would be no-one sleeping rough at the moment. It will go to Homeless Link,a body representing organisations that work with the homeless and be spent on grants to pilot new ways of working.
   
   
2. 'Helping people access healthcare' by, well, I can't really tell. The verbs used are 'highlight', 'support', and 'work with'. I've used such phraseology before and know what they equate to - very little. The government is trying to devolve healthcare commissioning to the local level, so how can they ensure the health needs of the homeless are fully met in every locality?
   
   
3. 'Helping people into work' by using the Work Programme. However effective the new private-sector led approach might be, it will be impeded by the fact that there are currently 2.6 million more unskilled workers than jobs. If there aren't enough private sector jobs, what then?
   
   
4. 'Reducing bureaucratic burdens' by reducing guidance and local authority reporting requirements. I genuinely don't understand how this will this tackle homelessness. Ironically, it might make it harder to calculate the level of homelessness nationally. Notably, there's also no mention in the report of how CLG will even monitor whether their pledge is being met.
   
   
5. 'Increasing local control over investment in services' by analysing the costs of homelessness. That one just sounds like a non sequetur. Community-based budgets are also referenced, but it seems quite a heroic assumption that giving the community greater control over Local Authority money will automatically result in better services for the homeless. The government has also removed the ringfence on homelessness grant, leaving Local Authorities free to spend it on whatever their councillors might choose. Call me unduly cynical, but the homeless are not a big local election voting demographic. It's worthy of note that taking away the ringfence on the Supporting People budget (which also assists the vulnerable) has resulted in it being dramatically cut by many Local Authorities.
   
   
6. 'Devolving responsibility for tackling homelessness' by giving the Mayor of London unspecified new responsibilities and £34 million to try and cushion the seismic impact benefit changes will have in London.
   

That final so-called commitment is the real key to this. The government has made a grand statement about ending rough sleeping, something that no government has managed even in times of economic growth and increasing public spending, then dumped the responsibility for actually doing it onto Local Authorities. Whilst making unprecedented cuts to their budgets. Nice work, Mr. Shapps. Is it really credible to presume the measures that form this vision will more-than-counterbalance the huge negative effects of other policies?

The above might give you the idea that I am doubtful that rough sleeping will cease to exist over the next four years. Meanwhile, the Mayor of London has pledged to end rough sleeping in the capital by 2012. According to figures from the charity Crisis, 3975 people slept rough at some point in London during 2010/11, an increase of 8 per cent on the previous year's total of 3673 and of more than a thousand since 2005/06. The cuts to housing benefit have yet to be implemented. Five and a half months to go, Boris. Good luck.

Actually ending rough sleeping would be a strikingly impressive thing to do. However the government's policies are already increasing homelessness, and by their own admission will continue to do so. Far from articulating ways to solve the problem, they are making it dramatically worse. Their whole vision for ending rough sleeping is thus just an empty promise and a waste of words. I can only hope that the members of parliament who signed their names to this incredibly hypocritical document are eventually held to account for it.

Who Cares

This was not an easy post to write, but has been on my mind for a while. Social care recently made the news due to the possible collapse of Southern Cross, which cares for 31,000 frail elderly people in 750 homes around the country. Prior to that story breaking, I suspect much of the public knew little about how social care works in this country, unless they needed to ask for it. The government's online portal Directgov largely bundles social care into its 'Disabled People' section, but its remit is wider than that. As well as the disabled, care should be available to all other vulnerable people who need it: the elderly, children, even whole families. The responsibility for this lies with upper tier (county) and unitary councils, not the National Health Service. However practically all councils have contracted out elements of care to the private sector, for example paying for elderly people to stay in private care homes like those run by Southern Cross.

The British population is an ageing one. Government statistics state that between 1984 and 2009 the number of people aged 65 and over in the UK increased by 20% to 10.1 million. In 2009, 16% cent of the population were aged 65 and over. The number of people aged 85 and over more than doubled over the same period to 1.4 million and the percentage aged under 16 fell from 21 per cent to 19 per cent. People are living longer, which is cause for celebration. However, the public sector is not keeping pace with demographic change. It is inevitable that as the population ages, the cost of social care for the elderly will rise. It is already one of the largest chunks of county council expenditure, generally second only to education provision.

To date, the government's approach to social care strikes me as disgracefully negligent. The Department of Communities and Local Government took the largest budget cut of any government department in the Spending Review; their administration and programme budget reduced by 51% over three years and their capital budget by 74%. This is the department that funds local government, and naturally the cuts were passed on. Cambridgeshire County Council, for example, needs to cut £116 million from its budget in five years, including cutting 25% of social care funding. Yet Communities and Local Government takes no responsibility for social care, as it ostensibly belongs to the Department of Health. Unless I've misunderstood somehow, having completely seperate government departments funding and setting policy for such an important service is incredibly dangerous and counterproductive. CLG's sudden reductions in grants to local councils are putting vulnerable people in need of social care at great risk.

That's the national picture, horrifying in a dry statistical way. Contrast this with a personal experience. My Grandfather was born in 1920 and worked for the National Health Service as an administrator from the end of the Second World War until his retirement. He is 91 years old and my Grandmother, who is 85 years old, can no longer care for him, as she has been doing for many years. He is incontinent, can barely walk even with a frame, and has dementia. He was taken into hospital three months ago with an infection and has remained there since. The infection has cleared up, but the frailties of 91 years cannot be cured. The county council's social services have determined that my Grandmother cannot take care of him alone and he needs overnight care. However the county council do not provide overnight care at home. Whether this is a long-standing policy or a recent cut I'm unsure, but the result is that my Grandfather needs a place in a nursing home.

All the affordable care homes within a reasonable distance are full and have waiting lists, leaving my Grandfather in hospital limbo. He cannot be discharged as he cannot be cared for at home, so for the past few months he has been a textbook bed-blocker. Although he is generally quite content, this is an extremely upsetting and difficult situation for my family. My Grandfather does not need to be in hospital, but there is an acute shortage of the kind of care that he does need.

This is the reality of social care for the elderly today. There aren't enough places in nursing homes for people that need them. Even when places are available, quality of care is variable and sometimes totally disgraceful. Southern Cross demonstrates the ugly side of privatisation - when companies fail their customers suffer. A public service responsible for the lives and wellbeing of the frail elderly should never be allowed to fail. It should not be the case that you can only have a comfortable, secure old age if you can pay at least £500 a week for the privilege. I am ashamed that I didn't realise how bad things had become, and how much they may worsen as cuts continue, until my Grandfather needed care.

I was utterly sickened by Vince Cable's statement that the government wouldn't consider bailing out Southern Cross. Eight hundred and fifty billion pounds was spent bailing out the banks. £850,000,000,000. It was apparently worth propping them up despite their refusal to reform, but putting £230,000,000 towards the care of 31,000 of Britain's most vulnerable people is considered unreasonable. To put that in the clearest possible terms, the rent bill that Southern Cross is struggling to pay is less than 0.03% of the cost of the bank bailout. Southern Cross clearly acted in a financially irresponsible manner; so did the banks. But banking is not an essential public service, and care of the elderly is. I defy Vince Cable to look into the eyes of a ninety-one year old man and tell him that care homes don't deserve a bailout. I defy him to look into my eyes, the eyes of anyone with a frail elderly relative that they love, and say that care homes can be allowed to go bankrupt. Why should Vince Cable even make such a statement? He is Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. How does that position give him the authority to talk about care of the elderly?

The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights recently criticised the UK's privatised social care model for failing the most vulnerable, which was reported with unusual forthrightness in The Telegraph. The government cannot continue to ignore social care and treat it as purely a problem for local councils. Major reform and investment are needed. As a society we need to face up to old age and give the elderly the care and dignity that they deserve. This is not a party political issue and there is no question of whether we can afford to care for our older generations. It is our fundamental responsibility as a society to do so.

I love my Grandfather and have so much to be grateful to him for. He helped to instill in me a social conscience and awareness of the importance of learning from history. He deserves so much better than his current situation and it makes me very angry that there's little I can do to improve it. Even if a care home place does finally turn up for him, it's incredibly worrying to think that he might get poor care or that the home could go bankrupt. At least my Grandfather has a wife, children, and grandchildren who love him very much and are doing our best to get him what he needs. I hardly dare think of how frail elderly people with distant or disinterested relatives, or no-one at all, cope with the current system.

National action is needed now to save social care from collapse, but I fear that the current government will continue to put austerity first. The Coalition insists that cutting public spending is their absolute priority. I disagree with this for many reasons, but what it really boils down to is that I think human rights are more important than the mirage of What Is Best For The Economy. Comfort and dignity in the last years of your life are rights, not products. In a country as rich as the UK this should go without saying. My Grandfather and his generation were my age when the government brought the welfare state into being. He worked throughout his life with the belief that the government would take care of him in his old age if he needed it. It's despicable to take away that safety net now that he does need it and no longer has the ability to fight for it. Those of us who can stand up for the right of the elderly to be cared for must do so. Not just for those who need it now, but to secure our own future wellbeing.