Building Better commission report set to be published this month

The interim report of the government’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission is due to be published this month.

Prime minister Theresa May revealed the release during a speech at the annual Chartered Institute of Housing conference last week in which she criticised her predecessor David Cameron’s concentration on home ownership.

May said that she is “looking forward” to reading the interim report of the commission, which has been set up to develop proposals for improving the design of development.

James Brokenshire, secretary of state for housing and communities, is understood to be keen to see the report published before the Cabinet reshuffle due to be triggered by the election of a new Conservative leader.

The final report of the commission is due to be published at the end of the year.

Andrew von Bradsky, the government’s chief architect, had earlier told a session on design at the conference that the commission’s recommendations will feed into the government’s thinking but that there was no commitment to embrace them.

And urging her successor to make national space standards for housing mandatory across all local authorities, May rejected the idea there must be a “trade-off” between increased housing supply and better quality homes.

“I do not accept that, in 2019, we can only have sufficient and affordable housing by compromising on standards, safety, aesthetics, and space.”

Universal application of the national space benchmark, which local authorities can currently opt out of, would remove the commercial disincentive to develop sites in areas with stricter standards, she said.

May also used her speech to criticise the focus on promoting owner occupation under previous governments, arguing that social housing became a “victim of the single-minded drive for home ownership”.

She said: “Too many governments – including, I am not afraid to say, the one in which I served as Home Secretary – have concentrated solely on boosting home ownership, as if supporting those struggling to find a home to rent was somehow contrary to such an aim.

The ability to rent a decent home in a suitable location is a “vital part of a healthy housing system”, said May.

And in the speech, the prime minister said there are no “silver bullet” solutions to England’s deep-seated housing problems.

“Getting the right homes built in the right place is considerably harder. There is no single silver bullet. No button to press or lever to pull that can magically make millions of homes appear overnight.”

Arguing that tackling housing requires “concerted action on many fronts”, she said: “It is the political world’s focus on the grand gesture rather than incremental change that is partly responsible for the crisis we are dealing with today.”

“We must also fight long-term structural problems with long-term structural action. And that means creating the conditions that guarantee a lasting supply not just of the homes we need today, but of the homes we will need tomorrow.

May said an action plan and timetable for implementing the proposals for reform, outlined in last year’s social housing green paper, will be published in September.