By Colin Wiles, housing consultant.

The sacking of Esther McVey last week and the appointment of Christopher Pincher as housing minister was a depressingly familiar event.
We’re now on the 28th housing minister since Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister over 40 years ago in 1979. That was 489 months ago, so each one has served for an average of 17.5 months, less than a year and a half.

Since 2010 that has reduced to an average of 12 months each. The longest in post was Grant Shapps, at just over two years. Three lasted for nine months or less. For many, the job’s been a temporary stepping stone on the way up the greasy pole.

How’s it possible for a new minister, in many cases new to the sector, to grasp the brief; to understand the intricacies of housing markets; how the planning system impacts upon housing; how different sector interact; all within a matter of months? Then, having digested all this, how can they set out a long-term strategic direction for dealing with the housing crisis?

Many of us have worked in housing for years, if not decades, and still don’t know how it all works! Most housing ministers have left the building before they even begin to understand the brief.

Is it any surprise that so many bad and wasteful housing decisions have been made in recent years, ranging from Help to Buy to voluntary Right to Buy? Is it any wonder that we’ve had a growing housing crisis for the past 40 years when the position of housing minister has been
treated with such a lack of seriousness? The lack of leadership is plain for all to see.

You have to ask the question: does this revolving door of housing ministers not display a degree of contempt for the homeless and badly housed? Is it not an insult to all those who work in the sector?

According to the Institute for Government, this turnover of ministers, especially in housing, is a major problem:

“Ministers have a crucial role in government, setting the direction of departments and taking the key decisions involved in running them. Once appointed, they must master a complex brief (often from scratch), build relationships with their officials and stakeholders, develop a clear plan for what they want to achieve – and then oversee its implementation.

“Such constant change undermines good government. It means ministers lack the expertise they need to do their jobs effectively and are unable to see policies through to results. It means Parliament finds it difficult to hold ministers to account for the outcomes of their decisions. And it means departments suffer constant changes in direction, crippling efforts at long-term reform and creating confusion and waste.”

Do you remember the national housing strategy that was published in 2011? It was generally derided as a fairly weak document but it said, “…we need to make long-term, strategic changes to the way in which we plan for housing”. But how is this possible when housing
ministers change so often?

Yet we do little or nothing to protest about it. In fact, every time a new housing minister’s appointed there’s a naïve expectation that this time it might be different. Senior figures in our sector queue up to welcome the new incumbent, but within a matter of months the door flips
and another figure is in post. Is it time to say enough is enough?

After the war there was a major problem with homelessness. Over 100,000 homes had been destroyed and many ex-servicemen returned home to find they had nowhere to live. A group called The Vigilantes, or the Secret Committee of Ex-Servicemen, decided to take direct action to deal with the housing crisis.

They organised a mass squatting movement, occupying empty houses in coastal areas and ex-barracks. Around 40,000 people were housed in this way and the Ministry of Works made over 850 former military camps available to the squatters.

The press was broadly sympathetic until the squatters started to occupy luxury houses and hotels in London. But the tactics did have an impact. Post-war governments, both Labour and Conservative, responded with a mass housebuilding programme. Within a decade a Conservative government was building over 270,000 homes in England and almost 60% were council homes.

Oh, happy days! I don’t advocate lawbreaking, but perhaps some form of direct action is the only way forward now? It might be the only way to make the political classes take notice.