The inevitable cuts we are going to experience in public services will invoke the usual schizophrenic response in the private sector.
Any move to slim down the HCA after the general election will be warmly welcomed, of course, as the private sector harbours a huge amount of inchoate suspicion in respect of waste in the public sector and mutters darkly about "jobsworths" and red tape.
However, housebuilders and all their multifarious friends and relations (aka consultants) will be the first to cry "foul" if their schemes are not processed quite as quickly as they would like. Simply slashing the resource and carrying on with the same old systems will not do the necessary; the trick in more-for-less Britain will be how to reform an existing (and still very unsettled) housing agency into a stable, streamlined and efficient service (and that's before we begin to tackle the planning system!).
Easier said than done, of course. And all of this to be considered against a backdrop of the mixed fortunes of the HCA\TSA apparatus, still in its infancy after all. Just where do you establish your baseline (if we aren't to rely on anecdote or prejudice)?
Figures recently released from CLG on housing market renewal only go up to 2007, just as the worst recession in history hit home. The NHBC figures issued a couple of weeks ago show annual housing start improvements in "the North East and North West at 149% and 37% respectively" so clearly some things are working well in some places.
We very badly need to know exactly what is going on so that we can learn quickly from best practice and retain the bits of the machinery that are working well.
Most importantly, we will need to find ways of cutting right back on expensive bureaucracy while maintaining stringent controls on public money and accountability.
The private sector may be able to assist with some leading edge methodology here: when I was at Tesco, we summarised our entire annual trading plan on four sides of A4. Surely it is not beyond the wit of human kind to devise a streamlined and accountable housing agency that will meet the needs of New World.
We will need to take a cold hard at everything if we aren't to further beleaguer our already crippled industry by reforming our public sector housing agency into a further mass of confusion.
Above all, the building sector needs clarity and stability for the long term.
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