SIR – The Treasury, in rejecting all economic policies but immediate cost-cutting, is lagging behind current thinking. We need to move away from use of a “single bottom line” of profit to provide a case for investment, towards a “triple bottom line”, taking into account people, planet and profit.
Nowhere is the need for this approach more obvious than in house building. Some 3.5 million households need affordable homes; the planet could benefit from fuel-saving houses, and the building industry from employment and profit.
A report from the Pro-Housing Alliance suggests the Treasury should consider that future cost savings in the NHS, education and other sectors – because of the improved health of families no longer encumbered by bad housing – would exceed the cost of borrowing £50 billion a year to build 500,000 green homes. The capital cost would be recovered by the sale or rental of the houses.

Steve Battersby President, Chartered Institute of Environmental Health
Peter Ambrose Visiting Professor in Housing and Health, Brighton University
Stephen Hill Director, C2O Futureplanners
Angela Mawle Chief Executive, UK Public Health Association
Peter Archer Chairman, Care and Repair England
Adrian Cooper Director, Team Homes
Rev Paul Nicolson Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust,

SIR – The Treasury, in rejecting all economic policies but immediate cost-cutting, is lagging behind current thinking. We need to move away from use of a “single bottom line” of profit to provide a case for investment, towards a “triple bottom line”, taking into account people, planet and profit.

Nowhere is the need for this approach more obvious than in house building. Some 3.5 million households need affordable homes; the planet could benefit from fuel-saving houses, and the building industry from employment and profit.

A report from the Pro-Housing Alliance suggests the Treasury should consider that future cost savings in the NHS, education and other sectors – because of the improved health of families no longer encumbered by bad housing – would exceed the cost of borrowing £50 billion a year to build 500,000 green homes. The capital cost would be recovered by the sale or rental of the houses.

Steve Battersby President, Chartered Institute of Environmental Health
Peter Ambrose Visiting Professor in Housing and Health, Brighton University
Stephen Hill Director, C2O Futureplanners
Angela Mawle Chief Executive, UK Public Health Association
Peter Archer Chairman, Care and Repair England
Adrian Cooper Director, Team Homes
Rev Paul Nicolson Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust,

There are times when exchanges in the Commons reach a new level of unreality. Chris Grayling, the minister for employment, answering an amendment to the welfare reform bill, said on 31 March that £67 a week “is the building block that we intend to use for the universal credit”. Therefore, if the amounts to be added for children or the disabled are not to be reduced by debts, the £67 will have to pay the rent remaining unpaid by a capped housing benefit; the childcare unpaid for when the allowance does not cover 100% of the cost; the council tax remaining unpaid by a level of council tax benefit set below 100%; a £50 charge for an application to use the child support service; and the £2.6bn, excluding fraud, to be enforced by the government as a result of errors in the delivery of welfare by officials and claimants, which also excludes an amount from errors by officials unrecorded at HMRC – thus obliterating the very small building block, which reduces in value every year and is described in the bill’s explanatory notes as an amount to cover basic needs.

Rev Paul Nicolson

Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust