The local political economy of the regulatory state: Governing affordable housing in England

Abstract

Regulatory governance involves the use of heterogeneous mechanisms to extract welfare gains from market-based processes. While often viewed as a depoliticization mechanism, here, we explore a distinctly political manifestation of regulatory governance. Our study focuses on the governance of affordable housing in England, specifically on local authorities' use of 'Section 106 0 (S106) powers to compel private developers to include affordable housing in new developments. We show that, following the financial crisis, the governance of affordable housing shifted from a partisan to a valence issue. As the crisis increased the issue salience of affordable housing, left-wing authorities' hitherto higher tendency to intervene was eroded in the midst of a broad-based increase in S106 deployment. In addition to extending insights into the political economy of regulatory state intervention, our findings shed valuable light on the undersupply of affordable housing in England.

Taking one for the team: Partisan alignment and planning outcomes in England

“…Within the existing oversight structure for the planning process in England, the Planning Inspectorate plays an important role in monitoring and reporting on local authority policies and outcomes; as such, a more explicit focus within the Inspectorate on political factors may be required. Recent findings on the role of party politics in shaping local authority planning outcomes in relation to affordable housing, and on the tendency of planning outcomes to favour the interests of more affluent populations (Clegg and Farstad, 2019;Coelho et al, 2017), serve to reinforce my suggestion here that enhanced scrutiny of the planning process in England is required.…”

Privileging privatisation: accounting practices and state transformation in the UK

“…On the other, literature on state transformation has sought to clarify the forces that have contributed to the Pawson 2006). Authorities can, however, play a significant role in shaping social housing provision through their oversight of planning processes (for additional detail, see Farstad 2021, andClegg 2021). 13 As a post-script, the intersection of UK national debt practices and social housing provision again became prominent in 2015-17.…”

Disrespect or dignity? Experiences of mandatory work participants in the Netherlands from the perspective of the right to work

“…With a growing gap between supply and demand as well as fewer social rented housing completions (MHCLG, 2019;Homes England, 2019), the government has lost faith in social housing, with the private sector identified as the way to meet housing demand (Archer and Cole, 2016;Wilson et al, 2017;Manzi and Morrison, 2018). This has exacerbated market failure and government policy failure through 'suboptimal market performance' in housing supply (Clegg and Farstad, 2019) and government failures at 'market shaping' (Kattell et al, 2018). At the same time, unaffordability of housing (Jacobs and Manzi, 2013) has contributed to a growth in the private rented sector (PRS) from 10.1 per cent to 19.9 per cent (MHCLG, 2018;ONS, 2018b;Wilson and Barton, 2019) of UK housing stock.…”