Alex Morton
Head of Housing, Planning & Urban Policy, 2010-2013
This report is Policy Exchange's contribution to retirement housing provider Hanover's Hanover@50 debate on the future of housing for older people. The report says reform of the planning system to encourage developers to build more homes, including bungalows and self build homes attractive to older people looking to downsize, is the fairer way of reducing the generational divide.
This report finds that Town Centre First, a policy intended to support the high street by limiting out-of-town shopping centres, has decreased competition between retailers, damaged the social fabric of communities and caused price rises of at least £1,000 a year for the average household. Town Centre First should be replaced with an 'Access First' policy, focussed on giving low income households access to social and retail hubs, but not restricting where these retail centres should be built.
Councils that fail to hit their own housing targets should have to release land to local people who want to design their own homes. The government could use this self-build model to ensure that councils hit their housebuilding targets, doubling the amount of new homes to over 200,000 by 2014 and giving the construction sector a much needed shot in the arm.
Create Streets shows how demolishing high rise social housing blocks and replacing them with real streets made up of low rise flats and terraced housing would improve the lives of thousands of people who suffer from living in multi-storey housing.
Planning for Less shows that councils are planning to build 272,720 fewer new homes since the abolition of regional planning. The report argues that rather than fighting councils the government should now work with them to ensure that they actually deliver the homes their targets propose.
Why Aren’t We Building Enough Attractive Homes: Myths, misunderstandings and solutions shows how large developers are ‘playing’ an outdated planning system and fooling the government into potentially wasting taxpayers' money propping up land prices. The report recommends wholesale changes to the planning system to end 'land banking', give local people planning control and get more good new homes built.
Selling expensive social housing as it becomes vacant could create the largest social house building programme since the 1970s. The sales would raise £4.5 billion annually which could be used to build 80,000-170,000 new social homes a year and create 160,000-340,000 jobs a year in the construction industry.
Cities for Growth sets out how reforming planning laws and the development of new 'Garden Cities' can both solve our housing crisis and boost economic growth.
More Homes: Fewer Empty Buildings proposes that, as part of a strategy for growth, the government should reform the Use Classes Order to make it much easier to move buildings and land from Use Classes A (retail) and B (employment) to C3 (dwelling houses).
Making Housing Affordable calls for a radical overhaul of housing policy, saving taxpayers around £20 billion a year. It calls for a big increase in the number of new homes being built for sale or rent in areas of high demand, with social housing tenants given new ways to get onto the first rung of the housing ladder.
Ahead of the Autumn Statement, Alex Morton, Head of Housing and Planning at Policy Exchange, calls for a freeze on business rates to help our ailing high streets. Alex shows that average bills are now £14,000, which is driving many small firms out of business and acting as a barrier to start-ups.
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange's Head of Housing and Planning, takes the Mayor to task over his failure to build enough homes to support London's growing population, which at just 16,000 new homes in the last year is only 30% of the Mayor's self-imposed annual target of 50,000.
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange's Head of Housing & Planning, argues that central planning guidance is responsible for the poor aesthetic quality of new housing, which is in turn negatively impacting the desire for new, local, development. By giving local people control over the quality of new housing, Alex believes that we will see opposition to new homes fall away.
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange's Head of Housing & Planning, sets out a range of ways the government could start providing more homes, including: helping people to self-build, ending expensive social tenancies, ending expensive social tenancies, trying to treat those near new homes fairly, creating new powers to help quality and ensuring Help-to-Buy has an exit strategy.
Giving local people more control over local developments could help solve the housing crisis and help the Conservatives win the next election, writes Alex Morton, Head of Housing & Planning at Policy, By engaging with this growing social and economic crisis, the government could build hundreds of thousands of good quality homes without isolating local people.
Alex Morton, Head of Housing & Planning at Policy Exchange, writes that in order to tackle NIMBYism and to build more homes we need to give back more control to local people over the quality of homes built in their areas and to offer neighbourhood incentives such as council tax rebates to residents who allow developments to go ahead.
Alex Morton, Head of Policy Exchange's Housing & Planning Unit, suggests that instead of being a cause for celebration, the news that house prices are rising at their fastest since 2006 underscores the pressing need to revise Help to Buy. By guaranteeing purchases of any home up to £600,000 for three years, he argues, the Government is offering short-term support to developers instead of a long-term solution to the problems facing the housing market and the increasing demand for affordable housing.
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange's Head of Housing & Planning, congratulates Housing Minister Mark Prisk for striking a sensible balance between supporting the social housing sector and requiring that it uses its assets in a fair and efficient way, but reiterates his call from Ending Expensive Social Tenancies for councils to sell off the most expensive council housing when it becomes vacant and use the proceeds to build new, better quality social housing.
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange's Head of Housing, Planning & Urban Policy, sets out ways the government can tackle the UK's housing crisis, including reforming the planning system and ensuring councils who fail to meet their own housing targets release land to local people who want to build their own home.
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange's Head of Housing, Planning & Urban Policy, sets out recommendations from his reportHousing and Intergenerational Fairness, calling for the planning system to undergo reforms to encourage developers to build more homes, including bungalows attractive to older people looking to downsize. This would free up family sized homes to younger families looking to settle somewhere bigger and help reduce the generational divide.
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange's Head of Housing & Planning, sets out why George Osborne’s help-to-buy scheme in the Budget may excite the hopes of would-be homeowners, but confirms our alarming dependence on an insufficient stock of homes.
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange's Head of Housing, Planning & Urban Policy, sets out findings from recent Policy Exchange housing report A Right to Build, arguing that in many countries a majority of new homes are self-built, while in the UK self-build only makes up 10% of new homes. Alex notes that getting local people to design attractive new homes would be an effective way to tackle the UK's housing crisis.
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange's Head of Housing, Planning & Urban Policy, reveals that housing starts fell by 11% in 2012 to below 100,000 new homes a year. Drawing on Policy Exchange research, Alex shows what the government can do to increase support for new homes and get more homes built up.
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange's Head of Housing, Planning & Urban Policy, responds to an article by Andrew Lilico asserting that there is no housing shortage in London and the South East. Alex points out the flaws stemming from the terminology used and calls for a less restrictive planning regime to help get more homes built.
Senior Research Fellow for Housing & Planning Alex Morton dismisses criticism that developers hoarding land are to blame for the lack of new homes, instead laying the blame at the door of the planning system which makes land with residential planning permission so hard to come by that it incentivises holding land as an asset rather than using it for building.
Senior Research Fellow for Housing & Planning Alex Morton sets out recommendations from his Policy Exchange research that would see kickstart housebuilding levels and calls for the creation of a new Department for Housing & Planning.
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange's Senior Research Fellow for Housing & Planning and author of new report Ending Expensive Social Tenancies, calls for the government to show that it is serious about housing by creating a Secretary of State for Housing & Planning.
Alex Morton, Senior Research Fellow for Housing & Planning and author of Policy Exchange's latest report Ending Expensive Social Tenancies makes proposals from the report that could see hundreds of thousands of new homes built and highlights the unfairness of housing social tenants in accommodation many hard-working people may never be able to afford.
