The Redfern Review: A grown-up take on the housing crisis
Earlier this year, Labour commissioned the chief executive of the country’s biggest house builder to lead a study of the decline in home ownership – the main reason politicians are worried about housing these days.
The Redfern Review has been published today. It shouldn’t be a great surprise that its conclusions don’t fit completely with our views – there’s very little comment on the needs of private renters – but it does make an important contribution to the debate, and there’s a lot we can agree on. Indeed, it takes a more objective approach than parties and industry players have done when they’ve tackled the same subject – there’s refreshingly little dogma or evidence of Taylor Wimpey’s commercial interests at play (though it plays down builders’ profit-driven reluctance to build enough homes).