We have another new Housing Minister following the Prime
Minister's cabinet reshuffle announced on 13 February - the
10th in 10 years.
Esther McVey has become the latest housing minister to lose her
job, to be replaced after only 7 months in post. The new Housing
Minister is Christopher Pincher, MP for Tamworth. He
was previously Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office.
Christopher Pincher is the 7th person to hold the
post of Housing Minister in the period since the 2015 General
Election and the 4th in the last two years:
- Brandon Lewis (July 2014 - July 2016)
- Gavin Barwell (July 2016 - June 2017)
- Alok Sharma (June 2017 - January 2018)
- Dominic Raab (January 2018 - July 2018)
- Kit Malthouse (July 2018 - July 2019)
- Esther McVey (July 2019 - February 2020)
- Christopher Pincher (February 2020 -?)
Secretary of State Robert Jenrick remains in post and there has
been no change in Secretary of State at the Department for Work
& Pensions with the current incumbent, Theresa Coffey, retained
in post however Sajid Javid's resignation and replacement by Rishi
Sunak has given rise to questions about whether the Budget
Statement planned for 11 March will go ahead.
ARCH Chief Executive John Bibby comments:
"The constant revolving door of ministers at MHCLG is a concern
for the housing sector and is amazing given that the Government's
2017 Housing White Paper acknowledged the need to "fix the broken
housing market". For council housing and council tenants this means
the likelihood of some further delays in bringing forward the long
overdue response to the Social Housing Green Paper and the promised
Social Housing White Paper - at least until the new Minister is
fully briefed.
"From an ARCH perspective it is disappointing in that we had a
meeting with Esther McVey to press the case for council housing
which was scheduled for 18 March. This meeting was itself
rescheduled following a meeting originally scheduled for December last
year which was cancelled because of the General
Election.
"We will of course be in contact with the new Housing Minister
to request a meeting with him - let's hope he's in post long enough
for that meeting to take place!"