In General Election years we get to write our letters to a range of party political Santas, though rarely with much childlike enthusiasm or expectation. And as the NFA today launches its own asks for the next UK government, we find we’re not asking for much that’s new.

In fact, you could boil down our members’ wish-list for a new parliamentary schedule into a single short sentence.

Show us the detail.

Please can we have less ‘what’ and more ‘how’ from all the people who hope to form our next government? Because, by now, it’s probably safe to say most of us are on the same housing page. Policymaker, practitioner or stakeholder, regardless of political colour, we agree that we need homes. We need more of them – and more of them need to be genuinely affordable, whether for rent or sale.

We also seem to be somewhere near a consensus on the idea – certainly out of fashion during the coalition years – that a sufficient supply of good quality social housing is every bit as essential to a healthy national housing market as a sustainable route to affordable home ownership. At the moment, we have neither.

So, in recent months, we’ve had a pledge from the LibDems to build 150,000 new social homes by the end of the next parliament after this one, and proposals for up to ten new garden cities.  A YouGov poll last year revealed that around three-quarters of Conservative voters want to see more social housing and the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities says it has invested £11.5bn in its Affordable Homes Programme to “deliver tens of thousands of homes for rent and sale right across the country.” Labour has even gone so far as to say that Right to Buy rules ‘need to be improved’. Housing features somewhere in the manifesto of every party likely to contest seats

There is, then, plenty of ‘what’ from every quarter. And there is definitely no shortage of evidence for the whys and wherefores. The Local Government Association has revealed that 10,896 homes were sold through RTB and only 3,447 have been replaced; a net loss of 7,449 social homes in 2022/23. With more than one million people on council housing waiting lists and £1.74 billion being paid out by councils each year for temporary accommodation for the homeless, this is unsustainable.

But what we still don’t have is hard detail. 

An estimated three million UK households are struggling to find a place to call home. What they need now is a plan from central government – this one or the next – that plucks high-flown promises out of the air and puts them firmly on the ground. Preferably with a front door and a secure tenancy.

How do we deliver the estimated three million homes the country needs? How do we plan and pay for them in times when there are skills shortages everywhere, desperately little capacity in the construction industry and no money in the pot? Exactly how do we turn Right to Buy into a sustainable home ownership offer that doesn’t strip assets and funds out of already hard-pressed public resources?

And how can councils possibly build when housing revenue accounts are on the verge of bankruptcy?

So the NFA election asks chime with everything our sector partners are saying. Invest in existing social homes, adequately fund the building of new social homes and improve welfare policy to eradicate poverty. There are no surprises here – except that we do believe the time for airy statements and high-flown promises has now been and gone.

What all of us need now is a plan from central government – this one or the next – that plucks those promises out of the air and puts them firmly on the ground. 

Preferably with a front door and a secure tenancy.