Pre 2017, Budget’s almost always took place in March/April. This was a period of the year when, if you were thinking about your biggest asset, your house, you could then, post Budget, get it on the market and hit the best season. The ‘Autumn Statement’ was just that.
Now, for reasons no one has satisfactorily explained, we get the main Budget in late Autumn – meaning that, given the last decade’s political upheaval, the second best-selling period is comprehensively stymied pretty much every year by apprehension and the spectre of major change. Dogma continues to dog, sorry, anyone involved in property based commercial activity – all from a Government almost exclusively run by people with absolutely no idea what commerciality is, and it shows.
Our political system is not geared for long term solutions anyway, a five-year cycle – with often diametrically opposed ideologies – is not long enough to implement a proper economic plan. It’s one corollary of the Chinese one-party system that they’ve been able to implement a cohesive plan and give it time to develop. Our problem these days is that we don’t even get the full five years, with two or three becoming the norm before another ‘baby out with the bathwater’ moment.
I’ve said it before, but with UK Property PLC worth c.10% of UK PLC, it deserves a coherent plan, mostly for the betterment of people that actually live in housing, but also as a backdrop to persuade more private investment – now in retreat because nobody ever knows what the next incumbent in No.10 is going to do.
Could we take property ‘out’ of politics, is it possible? How about a Council with actual experience of how things work, the commercial imperatives, who understand the planning process, who understand that some investments require a longer term returns so that rental schemes get a chance, who understand what is needed in different geographies and demographics?
Some kind of local Mayoral input must be a good idea, but the scheme being discussed is somewhat short on detail. But there are a lot of property ‘people’ out there with decades of experience and a willingness to help find solutions that benefit everybody and can help lead vast amounts of inward investment and the right infrastructure.
There’s a Budget coming on 28th October, please, let’s not let dogma drive good sense. No one, ever, has taxed their way to growth.
Comments (6)
ED for PM!
Careful. You will get Minibrain excited thinking he has a supporter!
Excellent piece and agree with the sentiment, Mr M! Appreciate that it feels like an age ago, however the change actually dates back to 2016, courtesy of then-Chancellor Phil ‘Spreadsheet Phil’ Hammond, who dramatically announced at the despatch box during the Autumn Statement in 2016: “I am abolishing the Autumn Statement.”
His rationale was to move the main Budget to the autumn, giving businesses and taxpayers more time to prepare for tax changes ahead of the new tax year, with the Spring Statement intended primarily as an economic update rather than a second fiscal event.
Feels like another world now when you cast your mind back, doesn’t it? Whether that was better for the property market is, of course, an entirely different question!
Ed Mead for Prime Minister!
Ed, you’ve landed on something I’ve been arguing for years, on these forums and elsewhere. Housing needs the same protection from ministerial whim that we already give monetary policy.
The Bank of England is the model. Interest rates used to be set by whichever Chancellor fancied a pre-election giveaway. We decided that was too important to leave to a five-year electoral cycle, so we handed it to the Monetary Policy Committee. Nobody seriously argues we should take it back.
Housing deserves the same treatment. A roof over someone’s head is not a policy toy to be reshaped every time a new Secretary of State wants to make their mark. It is infrastructure, and infrastructure needs decades, not parliaments.
The case for an apolitical housing authority is not just tidiness. It is practical. Investors will commit capital to long-hold rental schemes if they can trust the rules will still exist in year fifteen. Developers will plan pipeline against known, stable targets rather than guessing what the next reshuffle brings. Planning reform actually sticks instead of being unwound by the next government trying to look different from the last one. And people who live in housing, which is the point of the whole exercise, get policy built around their needs over a generation rather than around a minister’s next reshuffle.
We already accept this logic for the OBR and for monetary policy. There is no principled reason housing should be treated as less important than either.
None of this needs to be a party political fight. It is simply an admission that some decisions are too consequential to be re-litigated every parliament.
Exactly! Well said!