On "Finding Religion" on the Bedroom Tax

I can't help feeling some schadenfreude on the dilemma of Nick Clegg and its coterie when it comes to his volte face on the issue of the Spare Bedroom subsidy. Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy...

The current rationalisation is that new evidence has appeared which is a piece of outrageous sophistry. It has been left to the hardest core acolytes to try and get their mind around this argument and try and convey it to the incredulous masses. So far he, and they, have managed to fool no-one.

The key piece missing in the about turn is a response to the initial problem. As we have noted before the dilemma is rooted in the failure to build one and two bedroom units over a thirty year period which has resulted in a vast mismatch between occupiers and the premises they are ensconced in. 

There has been NO enunciation of a solution to this problem in the LibDems' flipflop just a recognition that they got the wrong end of the stick in the first place. 

Finding a solution to a housing problem though is not an intractable one. It could be argued that with economic recovery in train that THE major issue facing the country is housing at this point in time. It has been a subliminal crisis for so long that the sufferer becomes, like chronic pain, almost inured to it. However with the latest manifestation of the crisis being house price inflation (which then feeds through to rent inflation and cost of living), we have the issue once again threatening economic recovery (through inflation and the need to raise interest rates). 

The solution is clearly a massive house building spree which in ts first instance would be to deal with the structural inefficiency of subsidised tenants wallowing in the luxury of over-sized accommodations paid for, in part, by the tax/rate payers. We might also add that in many cases they wallow because the over-dimensioning is the result of lack of any alternative. 

When a problem becomes a fully blown crisis then measures must be extreme. The problem is that the shallow thinking of the Tory/LibDem coalition resolved upon a demand-side solution (tax them into submission) rather than a supply side solution (reconfigure the housing stock of the nation).

As 

 Tesco is to build 4,000 new homes in an attempt to make use of its vast undeveloped landbank with a £1bn construction programme.

The plan, announced weeks after the Guardian revealed that Tesco is hoarding land that could support 15,000 homes, is the biggest housebuilding project ever announced by the supermarket.

A Guardian investigation of Land Registry records found that the retailer was sitting on 310 sites that do not currently house a Tesco store.

Among the Tesco sites set for housing developments following Friday's announcement will be Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, close to the retailer's operational headquarters, where it plans to build more than 700 homes on a site where it previously planned a store.

The trade journal Property Week said the majority of the sites will be in the south-east of England but developments are also scheduled further north, including in Liverpool and the west of England. Schemes include 80 houses and flats on the former Evershed printing works site in St Albans, Hertfordshire.

Tesco said it was likely to build homes itself via its development wing, Spenhill, while also selling sites to housing developers, in a programme that has been valued by Property Week at £1bn, based on a valuation of £250,000 per home.

A Tesco spokesperson said: "In response to changing customer shopping habits we have decided to reduce the amount of new store space we build each year, building fewer large stores. Where we no longer intend to develop sites, we sell them, lease them or develop them for housing.

"We are pleased to be bringing new investment to communities up and down the country and playing our part in meeting local housing needs over the coming years."

Last April Tesco boss Philip Clarke cut the value of about 460,000 sq m of its land by £800m as he admitted the company would have to sell off land where it had previously planned to build stores, store extensions and distribution centres. However, the company has been slow to act as the most ready buyers for much of its land stock are likely to have been rivals such as the fast-growing Aldi and Lidl chains.

Retail analysts said Tesco was now turning to housing developments because residential development was more economically viable. The poor performance of out-of-town supermarkets meant the land was not necessarily worth more if it was dedicated to new retail sites.

Clive Black, an analyst at Shore Capital, said Tesco was under pressure to act due to public and political demand for space to build housing, alongside calls from shareholders to recoup some of the value of the land.

"This is a silver lining on a very dark cloud," said Black. "Tesco is at least trying to maximise value after a high-profile profits writedown but it's not clear how much it will be able to claw back. It's a sensible move and better than building a Tesco store that's not economic or selling to the competition."

Tesco already has a policy of building homes above or beside its stores as part of efforts to gain planning permission. In London alone, Tesco was set to build more than 800 homes last year, close to 5% of all non-local authority homes being built in the capital. That included projects in Woolwich, Highams Green and Streatham, where Tesco built a total of 450 homes.

Other supermarkets are also developing housing, with at least 4,500 homes expected to be built by the major grocers between 2013 and 2018. J Sainsbury was set to begin projects involving more than 1,500 homes this year, including a partnership with Barratt on a major development in Battersea, south London, which includes 700 homes and a new tube station. Some developments are smaller in scale. Waitrose has developed a number of stores topped by flats, while many retailers are turning redundant pubs into convenience stores with housing above.

Nice Place to Visit.. But You Wouldn't Want to Live There

One is tempted to laugh, but then again crying might be the better response looking at the rather superior Islington-dinner-party view of housing estates in the Guardian newspaper's survey of the "10 best council housing estates":

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2013/nov/16/architecture-housing?picture=422505580#/?picture=422505615&index=4

Before one dismisses out of hand this exercise in highfalutin architectural patronising of the residents of what are mainly high-rise slums one should think of the reality of these "gems". 

When some pensioner was mugged in the stairwell of the Park Hill estate in Sheffield did she get a frisson of relief in that she is at least getting mugged in an architecturally significant slum. Likewise did Erno Goldfinger's light touch with concrete provide inspiration for generations of inner suburbanite youths. 

As for Davy Place at Loddon in Norfolk, the only thought that comes to mind is "where is my bulldozer when I need it". How one can swoon over a particularly mediocre English take on the American "ranch" home, specially adapted by being crunched together in a series of alleyways crossed with an allotment, is beyond me. When compared to Poundbury (below), it's no contest. 

While some of these buildings may have moved on to better things, being hipster magnets now, the smaller (lesser?) examples of these "Cool Britannia" buildings still provide daily misery for their occupants and are arguably worse than some of the Victorian slums they replaced, if for nothing else than their deficient community relationships compared to the dim alleyways and smoky by-ways of the inner cities pre-WW2 where at least the residents' were mainly at eye-level.

Before dismissing this as a rant against 1950's architecture I would note that I am highlighting this because the very people that write such articles and revel in such structures still represent the oligarchy of planning in this country and given their druthers would have all the rest of living in such things.. while they are firmly ensconced in their Georgian rehabs in inner northern London. 

A Trickle Down Solution to the Spare Bedroom Tax - Using Some Basic Maths

Quite a goodly chunk of the recent South Central Regional conference was devoted to the debates on the HS2 (already covered in one of my policy posts) and the so-called Bedroom Tax. While I have discussed the Bedroom Tax before, I thought it good to elaborate on theme most particularly in relation to the housing policy (or lack thereof) of the party at this time. 

As for the actual debate, I found it pretty amusing, not for what was actually said (though there were a few laughs), but because the arcane discussion of clauses to include and exclude reminded me of the Marx Brothers' famous Contract Scene. On YouTube here for those who have never seen it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Sy6oiJbEk

The 800 lb gorilla in the room for me was that the debate was about the amelioration or different modes of application of the tax, and even of its morality, without virtually any mention of the root cause.

As I noted in the previous posting, the problem is the failure in recent decades to construct sufficient one bedroom units. Even now when I read about new social housing developments, the promoters proudly boast of the number of two- and three-bedroom units that the new complexes and estates will contain. This of course does not solve the problem that the Bedroom Tax seeks to rectify (punish?).

There is a number floating around of 660,000 units effected by the Spare Room Subsidy (I shall rather tongue-in-cheek use the official spin). So let's just use this number.. what this implies is that there are 660,000 singles or potentially a maximum of 1.32mn people (in couples) occupying two bedroom (or more social housing). Or in another potential calculation there might be a couple with one other dependent occupying a three bedroom housing unit where there is thus a spare room (so maybe even 1.8mn people).

The exact mix of how the 660,000 units is made up is not a number I have been able to find. But it should be a key number for this debate. So for the reasons of argument we shall posit that there are 660,000 units that are made up of:

• 400,000 units of two bedrooms or more occupied by a single or a couple

• 260,000 units of three bedrooms (or more) occupied by a couple and a dependent

This is a lot of units by any measure. In fact if the social housing stock was properly configured and allocated we might have a very substantial number of people in right-sized housing that are currently languishing on waiting lists. Moreover, we are currently building units to house the wait-listed people who could conceivably be catered to within the current housing stock.

What should be our policy beyond mere hand-wringing? Well, Labour have come out and made some hefty projections of how much social housing they would build per annum over a five year term. Like so many of the policy initiatives at their most recent conference it had the look of shooting from the hip: typically unfunded, unelaborated and unnuanced. 

What would be the effect if we committed to the construction of 200,000 units over the term of the next five year parliament? What if that commitment was ONLY to construct one bedroom units? What would be the effect? 

Well, if two hundred thousand singles and couples were moved into right-sized accommodation, then 200,000 units with two or more bedrooms would be freed up. Thus the maths is relatively simple, ergo:

• 200,000 new residences
• rehouses between 200,000 and 400,000 people
• and frees up 200,000 units of two or three bedrooms
• for potentially 200,000 couples with one dependent or two dependents (i.e. 500,000 or 600,000 people)
• or 200,000 single parents with one or two dependents (i.e. 400,000 or 600,000 people).

So by building 200,000 net new one bedroom units provides net new housing for between 400,000 to 600,000 people.

The effect of the number of those hit by the Spare Room Subsidy might be even greater. For as couples and singles move into one bedroom accommodation, two bedroom residences would become available for those couples with one dependent to move down from three bedroom units, thus freeing up spaces for larger family groups to occupy. 

OVER AND BEYOND all this, we still have a residual problem of those aged over 65 who are occupying over-sized space. While the Subsidy is clearly designed to give them a free pass, it might also potentially allow a single 66 year old sitting in a two or three bedroom unit until they are into their 80s. Only actuarial calculations (or put more bluntly the Grim Reaper) will fix this problem and the lead time is open-ended..

Clearly tempting such an individual (who might indeed have taken in a lodger or relative) to downsize is going to be a tough task, except if one was able to offer sufficiently tempting one bedroom units that they would voluntarily cede the space they are currently occupying.

All this should be read in context of my previous scribblings on the subject of replacement of the more mediocre examples of the social housing stock that were created in the 1950s and 1960s that are now no longer "fit for purpose".

And I shall finish by noting that verily as I was leaving the conference in High Wycombe that Saturday, what did I spy right in front of me at the exit gate?

... but my favoritest thing in the world... four mediocre 1950s (?) one bedroom units taking up the space that could easily be occupied by 12 (or indeed 20) modern one bedroom units... I rest my case..

Right-sizing Social Housing - More Carrot and Less Stick

When is a tax not a tax....? When it doesn't actually levy extra money but instead reduces a benefit on is already getting. The "under-occupancy penalty" does not qualify as a tax by any measure but the media and political class (and the measure's critics) have restyled it as the infamous bedroom tax. 

This is not to say that we agree with it. The only circumstance in which I could find this totally acceptable would be if the individuals trawled into the penalty's net actually had a realistic way of disposing of their "spare" rooms or moving to accommodation that was right-sized for their needs. When it comes down to it the LibDem policy should be about "right-sizing" the public housing stock, but to do that we need to have a sufficient stock of housing of the right nature in the right places. The penalty, as its name suggests, is a stick not a carrot for tenants to right-size their residential needs without a policy to provide them the means to downsize. 

It might be useful to recap how this works. These changes to the housing benefit came into force on the 1st of April 2013. They included an "under-occupancy penalty" which reduces the amount of benefit paid to claimants if they are deemed to have too much living space in the property they are renting. The size criteria in the social rented sector will restrict housing benefit to allow for one bedroom for each person or couple living as part of the household, with the following exceptions: 

• Two children under 16 of same gender expected to share 
• Two children under 10 expected to share regardless of gender 
• Disabled tenant or partner who needs non-resident overnight carer will be allowed an extra bedroom 
• Approved foster carers will be allowed an additional room so long as they have fostered a child, or become an approved foster carer in the last 12 months. Adult children in the Armed Forces will be treated as continuing to live at home when deployed on operations. 

In addition, local councils have been advised to allow an extra bedroom for children who are unable to share because of their severe disabilities. 

In a BBC article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-24090772

...a Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: "It is simply not affordable to pay housing benefit for people to have spare rooms. Even after our necessary reforms, we continue to pay over 80% of most claimants' rent if they are affected by the ending of the spare room subsidy.

"We are also giving local authorities £190m funding this year, so vulnerable claimants get the help they need during the welfare reforms."

An important caveat is that the only elderly caught in this net are those over 60 (if 60-65 year olds can be called elderly) who are under the qualifying age for State Pension Credit. This is estimated at 50,000 out of the 660,000 effected by the penalty. 

Therefore the penalty is not even an issue, or so it seems, for the pension-age retirees who may be over-occupying. While it is not a financial issue for them it is an issue for everyone else down the food-chain if there are over-60s under-occupying. As we noted in our musings on the Park Site Home plague, the housing stock for the elderly is a key issue. There we posited a solution for the elderly owner-occupiers of these trailer homes (a New Peabody Trust). The public housing sector is a whole broader can of worms but this issue of under-occupancy is closely linked to the dynamic that is driving the trailer home movement. However while owner-occupier retirees can downsize to smaller apartments or trailers, public housing tenants are trapped with virtually no supply of available units in the size they need.

Part of this problem has to do with the outmoded housing stock in the public housing space. Lets wind back to the 1950s. The social housing was new build for the post-war baby boom, war damage infill and replacement of Victorian tenements. It is somewhat ironic that in the 1950s, society was interested in replacing Victorian slums dating from a mere 60 years beforehand and yet these days, there is little consideration given to replacing a lot of the shoddy 1950s construction (thus 60 years old also) that passes as social housing. Much of it is socially undesirable (ghetto-like estates, high-rises, open balcony corridors etc), highly energy inefficient, outmoded internally (bathrooms, kitchens etc), high maintenance for councils and housing associations and fundamentally not "fit for purpose".  Too much of the talk is about building new units (which are undoubtedly needed in the net unit numbers required to be added) and yet there is virtually no discussion of re-utilising the existing stock. By that we are implying the land in many cases NOT the housing stock. Britain's social housing stock needs a rebuild. 

Thus to summarise what a policy might look like for public housing we should be embracing:

• Reconstruction: basically demolishing all post-war social housing that is not up to a given standard OR that is too low density and could be replaced with more suitable, denser (and greener) housing with specific tenant groups being identified and catered to. 
• Reconfiguration: More smaller units because these will liberate the larger units with a trickle down (or up) effect. 
• Refurbishment: This should not only be internally, but also externally. The Bauhaus aesthetic gave us not only Goldfinger- (Erno not Bond) inspired monstrosities but also the economic exigencies of the 1950s involved low-grade, shoddy (and moreover non-durable) building materials. Unsightly was not just an outcome, it was a goal. Today vast tracts of Britain are testament to a prefab mentality. This was an understandable exigency of those times but is not set in stone (or pebble-dash) forever.    

In synthesis this is the "rightsizing" of social housing.

Nick Clegg is perceived by many as continuing to defend the tax, though rightly he has pointed out that 250,000 families have been living in overcrowded accommodation while one million tenants have spare bedrooms. He justifiably claimed the Coalition was simply applying the same principle to the social rented sector as Labour applied to the private rented sector.

Meanwhile Labour are claiming that two-thirds of the 66,000 people affected are disabled, and say that the vast majority do not have the option of moving into smaller accommodation. The former flies in the face of the exemptions that we previously listed. Labour's plan to cancel the penalty, interestingly, has been costed at as much as £470m, though Labour said the costs can be met by closing tax loopholes in the construction industry. We are all for that. We wonder though, that as LibDems in government, why we had not insisted that if the funds raised ("saved" would be more accurate) from the penalty are £470m then why didn't we corral them into a special purpose fund for constructing one bedroom units to solve the problem. Where did the funds go? The slushfund of general revenue?

In conclusion I thought I might expound slightly on two examples of wrong-sizing (with reconstruction and reconfiguration overtones) that can be found in my immediate vicinity, though I wouldn't call my area needy in even my wildest imagination. But that is what makes the two cases somewhat more egregious because it touches on other issues like "fitness for purpose", screwy planning rules and Park Site Homes (where an encampment is right nearby). 

The first one is around 1/2 mile from me. It sits on the edge of the village/town/planning abomination of around 4,000 people, known as Colden Common. Here is a foto:

What we have is a half-acre lot with four non-detached micro-residences. Said plot has views of forest on one side and horse farms on the other stands on the junction of two minor roads (but with typical planning aplomb the "residences" don't face either forest or farm, but instead face the road junction). A bus to Eastleigh runs right by, so potentially very good for those needing public transport. This is part of the Winchester City area (with sometime LibDem domination). Looking at these we can alas only describe them as hovels. If you think the frontage looks narrow then take our word for it that the structure is only 12-15 feet deep. The vintage looks to be mid-1960s at the latest, but could very well be mid-1950s.  

Clearly what we have here is wasted opportunity. The scandal of such a squandering of a lot is the almost constant battle in Winchester to turn farmland into residential land (particularly because the city itself is abutted on the East side by the hyper-restrictive South Downs National Park). And yet here we have a prime lot designated residential that is occupied by these four hovels that should be demolished and a three-story 24-unit complex of one bedroom apartments might be built to replace them. What is the maths here? Pretty simple. Four micro-residences of substantial age, dubious habitability and no aesthetic value, on a large plot that have eight residents at most, could be replaced by an aesthetically pleasing, 100% modern complex that could be occupied by up to 48 residents, thus freeing up somewhere or other multiple-bedroom properties that the transferred residents might currently occupy. 

Then we have the second case... this is not so spacious in terms of land but a rather egregious example once again of mediocre housing from the past. This one (pictured below)

This is a further one mile down the road in Allbrook on the outskirts of Eastleigh. Looks all very nice, but what is the context? This is a street of terraced Victorian houses that once comprised the village (?) of Allbrook, before Eastleigh subsumed it. For some reason, in the 1950s there must have been a gap in the terraces or somesuch and so the town shoved into the gap five (by my count) non-detached hovels. They are rather hard to see here because unlike the rest of the street they are set at the back of the block (next to the busy Southampton to London railway line!) rather than the front, but trust me.. they are hovels. Poor construction, flat roofs... all the best of public housing circa 1955. 

Clearly these have also had their day. If we really wanted to push the envelope there could probably be 15 units (on three floors) on this site or being non-aggressive one could have them with two-floors like the terraced neighbours, in which case the number of occupants could be at least doubled and the micro-residences taken from quasi-slum to something more habitable. 

So the LibDem policy should have way less stick and way more carrot. The first step along this road would be corralling the funds from the under-occupancy penalty towards an economy-stimulating construction program of one-bedroom social housing (by destroying outmoded existing units) that would liberate larger units for reallocation. Sound complicated?



  

Park Site Homes Part 2 - The Solution - A New Peabody Trust?

Our policy piece of yesterday on trailer parks (let's call a spade a spade) in the UK left some readers hungering for more detail than just a moratorium on new "parks" and a timeline for elimination of the practice.

Here we shall elucidate one way in which this might be achieved. It might be useful though for us to pin our colours to the mast first by saying that we regard the Prince of Wales' Poundbury initiative (pictured below) in Dorset as the most significant town planning model worth emulating since World War Two. With that declaration followers can get the idea of where we are going on Park Site Homes and urban planning in general.

So far Poundbury has only been greenfields development but we see no reason why its principles cannot be applied to Park Home sites or indeed the vast tracts of mouldering post-WW2 developments by councils that blight the country. 

The key issues with Park Site Homes "resolution" are control and ownership. The 2,000 "parks" (or British favelas) do not have all the same legal basis or management structure. However, a policy aimed at resolving this problem needs to be national. Local government has shown that it not only cannot deal with the issue but that it actually was hand-in-glove with Park Home site administrators/developers in causing the issue.  

Here is the genesis of a policy:

• As a first step, giving the residents control over the entirety of their destiny by instituting a body corporate over their park would be the first step. Removing "park" operators as stake-holders. 

• Establish a Resolution Trust for the conversion of the parks into solid housing on a non-profit basis, for the sake of the argument we shall call it the "New Peabody Trust". 

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peabody_Trust

• Residents could vote out current administrators and appoint the Trust as site managers/developers

• The Trust's sole goal would be the conversion of the "parks" into medium and high-density housing for the over-60s within the stipulated time frame ending in 2025.  

So if a typical "park" has 60 trailers (we refuse to call them residences) then the goal would be to potentially increase the number of units in a redevelopment by 50-100%. While this sounds very dense it would be only  be the equivalent of making single-storey trailers into two-storey (or more). The main caveat would be accessibility, the prime consideration with the elderly. 

It would work by the Trust constructing a first structure on a "park" site and moving residents into it (they would exchange the titles of their existing units for the new apartments), then the trailers of the newly-housed inhabitants would be cleared off the site and subsequent structures erected, until all existing residents had been housed. The income from selling the extra 50-100% of units would cover the cost of having upgraded the existing residents' accommodation. Thus housing for 120 residents (at two per unit) in sub-standard Park Home units would become housing for 180 to 240 residents in residences that were "up to code", durable and fit for purpose. 

The whole process could be kick-started by a credit line of several hundred million pounds from the government. Before anyone baulks at this we might note the amount involved is not that different from the Help-To-Buy scheme.  

Park Site Homes - Britain's Favelas?

Recent months have seen a frenzy of crossed accusations and abuse in response to the comments about the Bedroom Tax made by the Brazilian, Raquel Rolnik  who spoke out in her capacity as the United Nations special rapporteur on housing. Many rounded upon the fact that someone from that country was not in a position to speak due to the woeful state of housing in Brazil. Having been to Brazil's major cities, there can be little rebuff to the claim that Brazil's major cities make a very good claim to be among the world's most squalid. However it was not a comparison of housing stock that Ms Rolnik was making but rather a comment on the Bedroom Tax and its intrusive nature. Frankly the tax is bizarre and attempts tackles the problem of people sitting in oversized homes provided at public expense from the wrong angle altogether. 

What the argument did prompt for me was thoughts about Park Site Homes as they are so glamorously named in this country. In the US, where we lived for over a decade they are less prosaically named "trailer parks" and they are synonymous with squalor and second- and third-rate housing models. 

Indeed, to call someone "trailer trash" is about the biggest social put-down possible in the US. Yet somehow the Park Site Home "industry" in the UK has managed to maintain a vaguely chintzy, if not chi-chi image. However, having a rather prominent trailer park just down the road from us in the upscale villages of the City of Winchester's rural parts constantly focuses the mind on the sheer incongruity of this model in the UK. I well recall when the local newspaper of Morris County, New Jersey, where we lived, trumpeted the fact when the last trailer park in the county closed early last decade. Trailer parks in the US imagination are typical of Tennessee and Arkansas, though they exist all over the country. Their denizens are Walmart customers at worst and at best, Walmart employees. Warren Buffet owns a stake in one of the largest builders of these structures and likes to called them "manufactured housing". They are rarely regarded as a local feature to boast of. 

Park Site Homes in their UK manifestation are bungalow-style residential properties, that are in reality large caravans without wheels, usually sited on private estates. There are over two thousand park home sites within the UK, primarily but not exclusively centred in rural areas, with an estimated quarter of a million residents (that means voters as well).

The thing that strikes us as strangest about this proliferation across rural England is that these essentially flimsy and non-lasting structures should have spread in the face of planning regimes that scarcely allow established residents and farmers to put up a scarecrow or a mailbox to their own liking. And yet in their midst they find tightly crammed aluminium and glass boxes which consume as much of local services as any two-up two-down residence but only pay a fraction of the amount of municipal rates because the values are so low. In the part of Winchester City Council's domain where the trailer park is located the value of a one bedroom apartment would be £120,000, while the trailer homes change hands for £70,000.

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/30283012

Stephen Gilbert, LibDem MP for St Austell & Newquay has been a strong commentator on the phenomenon.

http://www.libdemvoice.org/stephen-gilbert-mp-writes-park-home-residents-must-be-looked-after-properly-26546.html

As Gilbert notes most of the residents are elderly and many are vulnerable, with many park homes sites setting a minimum ‘near’ retirement age as a condition of residence. The industry heavily markets itself towards ‘property rich – cash poor’ senior citizens. Ironically the Park Site Home industry caters exactly for the group that is not ensconced in over-sized council or Housing Association properties (and thus bedeviled by the Bedroom Tax). This is the elderly home owner who wants to downsize and free up capital (for eventual nursing home costs?). We cannot be too simplistic either for while the South and South-West may be almost exclusively the elderly, other northern parts may just be a case of those with less access to council housing (working or low-wage) for whom the trailer park is the cheapest alternative. And this has been what has made the US trailer park industry what it is today, occupied by families rather than elderly couples. How long (if not already) before "buy to let" becomes more the norm with rack-renters accumulating cheap trailer homes in this country and renting them out to all comers.   

Gilbert also notes that anyone can own a trailer park, and as things currently stand a long criminal history or prior evidence of malpractice within the industry is no barrier to an individual buying and running a park. Unscrupulous site owners can make a quick profit by getting people to sell their homes at much less than they are worth and can bully, harass, intimidate residents into doing this. A recent survey found that almost two-thirds of park home residents reported living under unacceptable conditions and half said they were living under the regime of an unscrupulous park owner.

We would also note that an industry with such flimsy construction (and in the US the words "tornado" and "trailer park" are often linked) have an in-built obsolescence. How many 40 year old caravans do you see on the road? Well in ten years a lot of wheel-less caravans parked in Park Home Sites across the UK will be crossing this age threshold. Imagine a typical example. A trailer home first acquired and set up in the early 1980s. Might be bought in 2000 by a retiring couple. The husband dies in 2010, the widow lives on until 2022. By this stage, we have an aluminium shed with some mod-cons inside that is pushing 40-years of age. No-one would question the longevity of a house from 1982 but what would be the live-expectancy of this structure in a trailer park where all the other structures are similarly "over the hill". How does a town inspector assess the habitability of such a structure when he is comparing it to the brick semi-detached residences in the rest of his remit? Does he condemn it? Does he even visit it? Is it just hauled  away and a new one plumped down on-site?

Indeed, what evolution is there in Park Site Homes. Brazilian favelas started out made from tin and cardboard and some still are made of that but many have now evolved into hills-side eyries with views over Rio's beaches. They have brick or breeze-block walls and tiled roofs. Paradoxically a favela residence staked out on a muddy hillside in 1982 might very well be much more spacious and solidly constructed in 2013 than many a UK Park Site Home at this point in time. 

Stephen Gilbert claims that: "Park homes are an important part of the housing mix and meet a real need – we need to make sure though that the regulatory regime properly looks after park home residents". We would beg to disagree though that Park Site Homes should exist at all in the UK. Its true they exist but is it desirable in the UK.. no.. is it fixable... yes..

Clearly there is a need for medium to high-density dwellings for the elderly in the South and South-west. Who is doing something about it? Neither the councils nor the national government...What next...we sanction living in cardboard boxes under motorway bridges? A start would be a moratorium on all trailer parks with no new approvals ever...

There should be a policy to eliminate ALL Park Site housing from the UK. The paradox is that owners may find they cannot redevelop their sites for the desired housing styles, meanwhile residents need to find a place to live somewhere... 250,000 people cannot be tossed on the streets. regulations should allow the redevelopment of trailer parks at a higher density, provided residents are allocated affordable housing within the complexes.

The issue of underpayment of taxes to councils for the residents in the trailer parks also needs to be addressed... are park site operators being levied enough on their common revenues and gains from the operation of the sites?

The sheer number of people involved in this dilemma means that it is not an issue that should be ignored. That councils have let prime territory for development be corralled for shoddy housing models that would not normally be allowed within their area of control is an anomaly and double standard  Indeed it even raises issues of governance and, dare we say it, corruption. How else does such a gross breach of planning rules make it through without palms having been greased?

When it comes down it the Park Site Home movement is yet another indictment of the total failure of UK urban planning since the Second World War. Time for the LibDems to set a goal for the elimination of all Park Site Homes as a priority by 2025.