Update on the Campaign

Since NaSBA was formed we have been making overtures to a number of bodies and political leaders. In the first wave of our campaign we sent copies of our report to every MP and MEP in the country. This produced some very positive responses. Since then we have been working to get to know the key people within the Department for Communities and Local Government and the new Homes and Community Agency. Reports of some of these meetings are detailed below:

Meeting with Margaret Beckett (who was then the head of the Department for Communities and Local Government).  We saw her early June, just before the re-shuffle, and we got an encouraging response, from both Margaret and her officials. Unfortunately she then moved completely out of Government and John Healey has now taken over her role. So far we haven’t managed to get a meeting set with him, but we are in contact with his main housing advisor at the Department for Communities and Local Government, and we hope to get in to see him shortly. We are also likely to be involved in a workshop at the Department looking at various options for encouraging more new housing in the UK.

Meeting with the Homes and Community Agency.  Following on from a meeting in February, we have been in touch with them again to try to make some headway on our proposals for some of the Government’s larger sites to be split up into smaller plots suitable for self builders. All the regional offices of the HCA have been contacted about trialling this, and the response was patchy - some thought it would be too fiddly to deal with lots of individual self builders; others thought it might be worth a try. We’re currently hoping to get them to progress this in one region (most likely in the South West) and if this proves successful, we hope to get other regions on board too.

Meeting with the Conservative’s Housing team. We met the chief of staff from Grant Shapps’ office in September. The response was encouraging and we’ll be following up the meeting shortly.

Eco-Towns. We have been in contact with the developers behind each of the first wave of eco-towns to encourage them to make sites available for self builders. As the shortlist has only recently been announced, there has been no response so far, but we will follow up in September when everyone is back from their holidays.