Housing: creative solutions

Economic turmoil will have knock-on impacts for affordable housing supply chains in the UK, but it also presents an opportunity for social landlords to demonstrate resilience, argues Peter Brown Trump's tariff barrage, with a 10% baseline tariff on its goods exports to the US includes a 25% tariff on steel and aluminium imports , materials fundamental to the construction industry. Manufacturing and construction supply chains are directly in the firing line and perhaps more importantly, unforeseen turbulence creates uncertain future costs, risks of contract failure and possibly more company insolvencies. This is no longer a distant concern. How should the sector respond? Decisive action is needed. The potential impact of these tariffs, particularly on steel and aluminium, will ripple through our supply chains, inflating construction costs and jeopardising project viability. Housing organisations, from the largest G15 to the smallest community-led associations, must adopt a war-room...

  Another year, another grotesque symptom of Britain's broken housing market. While families languish on ever-lengthening social housing waiting lists, consigned to the precariousness of private renting, a different story unfolds for a select few. 2024 saw a record surge in the creation of limited companies designed solely to hoover up buy-to-let properties. Sixty thousand of these entities sprouted up last year, a 23% jump from the previous "record" in 2023. Let's be clear: this isn't about providing homes ; it's about financial engineering, about exploiting a system rigged in favour of the propertied class. This isn't some sudden blip, but a deliberate, decade-long trend, turbo-charged since 2018 when the tax rules were conveniently "rewritten" for landlords. Now, nearly 400,000 buy-to-let companies stalk the land, gobbling up homes and turning them into investment vehicles. We're told 70-75% of new buy-to-let purchases are now funnelled...