According to plan?

1. Will the decent homes standard be met?

By housing associations, yes; for councils it’s not looking good. They have just five months left to decide between stock transfer, arm’s-length management or the private finance initiative to fund improvements. As of February 2004, 171 of 354 councils had yet to submit a proposal.

The government has made a million homes decent since 1997, a rate of 137,000 a year. But Jeff Zitron, a director of consultant Tribal HCH, says it needs to improve 167,000 a year from 2005 until 2008 and 250,000 in 2009/10. Given that it’s the hardest-to-renovate properties that remain – and that large urban councils such as Birmingham and Camden have reached an impasse with tenants over the available options – that’s unlikely to be achieved.

2. Can the plan balance the housing market?

House prices have risen further in the two years since the plan, deepening problems and complicating the picture, but there is a conviction in the sector that the growth areas and pathfinders are a step in the right direction. Launched a year ago, the Northern Way is still more grand vision than workable plan – interviews are only now taking place for senior staff.

The South-west got no extra funding above inflation in the original plan and shoulders its affordability crisis alone. In December it was promised a 43% rise to £196m by 2007/8, but it will have to fight hard against the North to get any money.

3. Can the government solve the housing shortage in the South?

To achieve its long-term desired effect, the government’s massive housebuilding programme – 1.1 million new homes over 15 to 20 years in the growth areas – still needs to battle a far-from-perfect planning system, building skills shortages, the continuing expense of modern methods of construction, environmentalists’ concerns and NIMBY protesters. In the meantime, the Starter Home Initiative has finally met its Communities Plan target of helping 10,000 key workers own homes by 2003/4, and Key Worker Living, launched last April, claimed credit for a further 2000 by November. But the most dramatic change for poorer would-be homebuyers is the news that housing association tenants would be able to buy a stake in their homes, which will affect 300,000 families.

4. Won’t the growth areas just end up as unsustainable urban sprawl?

The target is to build 60% of developments on brownfield land, which the government has met, although it is still trumpeting the figure from 2002.

But it all comes down to transport. July’s spending review included a new community infrastructure fund that will provide £200m up to 2008 for “essential” schemes to unlock housing sites in the growth areas. But given that Crossrail, the east-west rail-link through the Thames Gateway, received £154m of separate funding back in 2001 just to do a feasibility study, that’s not very much.

5. Can the plan perk up a depressed housing market in the North?

On the bright side, eight of the nine pathfinders have strategies in place (negotiations continue in Hull and East Riding). But as house prices rise nationwide, there is a rising affordability crisis in pockets such as Harrogate, York and the North-west’s footballer belt. If the plan were launched today, there would be a strong case for a growth area in the North. Volatile costs are an issue for the pathfinders, especially in the North-west where buying up homes for demolition has become more expensive.

6. Has the plan helped rural areas?

It did raise the Housing Corporation’s target for building homes in rural areas, although when this was reflected in regional housing strategies it was often at the expense of market towns and barely made up for the abolition of local authority social housing grant – which had a devastating impact on rural councils’ ability to fund new homes. The ODPM also let councils slash the council tax discount on second homes from 50% to 10% – the South-west regional office expects this will make an extra £4.8m available this year for affordable housing. South Hams council in Devon, for example, might build 130 homes with the £2m it has raised.

7. Are the regional housing boards working?

Merging the boards into the regional planning authorities is a step in the right direction, but they must forge closer links with development agencies to tie housing with economic growth. The regional agenda was dealt a blow in November, when the North-east rejected an elected assembly, one of John Prescott’s pet projects. If rumours of a new deputy prime minister after the general election are true, that might also hinder their prospects.

8. Could the election derail the plan?

In the next four months, the government will be focusing on high-profile projects in marginal seats and on Conservative issues such as home ownership. After an election, the Conservatives say they would abolish the plan, the ODPM, regional housing boards and Audit Commission inspections, but with few predictions of a Tory victory, the plan is probably safe for the next five years.