Clear as mud

However, with last week’s Labour party conference and this week’s Conservative gathering, the waters appear only to have been muddied further.

To the outside eye, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister appears to have been metaphorically wringing its hands since John Prescott announced a mystery review of “public financing of housing” 10 days ago. Civil servants have spent the past week telling anyone who will listen that there is no fourth way. However, when pressed on the point as to precisely what it is that Prescott meant, they all have blank faces. The strong suspicion is that the deputy prime minister may have let something slip that was not his intention. Unfortunately for him this admission has been seized upon by anti-stock transfer campaigners. They scent blood. Whatever the case, local authorities feel thoroughly left in the dark over what the ODPM intends (see page 11) and ultimately for the tenants they serve this cannot be a good thing.

You would think that, given the housing policy mire in which the government has (hopefully momentarily) lost itself, the Tories would be eager to exploit the open goal. However, what they appear to have come up with is a mishmash of their very own. Following a series of savage responses to their proposals over extending the right to buy to housing associations, in private the Conservatives have begun to backtrack on what had at least been a clear policy. Instead John Hayes, the Conservative spokesman on housing, has taken the party’s housing policy down a road that many in the housing sector will recognise as having been trod before.

Unfortunately for Prescott, his admission has been seized on by anti-stock transfer campaigners. They scent blood

As we report on page 10, the proposals to require housing associations to recycle the extra funds they make when tenants of shared ownership homes “staircase” up and to extend the right of shared ownership to all social housing tenants, were originally proposed by Baroness Dean’s low-cost homeownership taskforce. Dean admits to feeling “very strongly” about the issue of recycling profits from shared homeownership – the Tories estimate the amount to be up to £160m a year. However, as associations did at the time of the original report, they will maintain the protest that they already use these funds to improve their existing stock or build new homes.

The net result of all this politicking is, however, surprisingly simple. Housing may be an issue that is rising up the political agenda – no one can deny that, given the extra funds from the Treasury – but as a potential vote-winner it is being sadly neglected.