By Neil Merrick

Housing Journalist

Faced with increased homelessness, government spin doctors had little real option but to create an alternative version of the truth.

Instead of acknowledging that the number of families in temporary accommodation was rising, the department’s press team focussed on the fact fewer people were asking local authorities for assistance. “Homelessness in England falls,” declared a press release.

No, this isn’t a vision of the days immediately before the next general election. In fact, it happened nearly 20 years ago under the last Labour government, courtesy of the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

To be fair, one of the press officers who spoke regularly to journalists in those days was slightly embarrassed by his colleagues’ attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the media. “I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said.

Also, on the positive side, press officers did at least chat to journalists back in the mid-2000s. Fast forward to 2024, and you’re lucky if the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities even responds to your enquiry.

Then again, they are extremely busy. Busy, in the main, ensuring the government gets its message across ahead of the election with slogans and stats that should slip easily into campaign literature distributed by Conservative MPs.

“By the end of this year, there’s every chance that any DLUHC press officers with photos of Michael Gove on their bedroom wall will have torn them down, replacing them with pictures of Angela Rayner, or whoever”

Read many press notices and you’d be forgiven for thinking they were written, or at least approved, by the Conservative Party. Not by a government department. So, is there any real difference?

In theory, government press officers are civil servants. Non-partisan. But they are also part of a ruthless publicity machine that’s on a non-stop spin cycle – fearlessly churning out ministers’ claims while fending off pesky fact checkers and even, on occasions, regulators from the UK Statistics Authority.

At least they aren’t making as many videos. Since Esther McVey’s brief reign as housing minister ended in early 2020, her hard hat and high-vis jacket appear to have been retired to the DLUHC’s props room.

It’ll be interesting to see if they reappear for the rumoured post-election exhibition honouring the achievements of the numerous men and women to have held the post of housing minister since the turn of the century.

Meanwhile, and more seriously, are press officers automatically biased towards the party in power? Well, yes and no. To some extent, they’re motivated by the desire of all PR professionals to ensure their employer gets the best publicity, regardless of minor inconveniences such as the truth.

But they’re also flexible enough to spot a change in power when they see one. By the end of this year, there’s every chance that any DLUHC press officers with photos of Michael Gove on their bedroom wall will have torn them down, replacing them with pictures of Angela Rayner, or whoever.

In the meantime, they wage the same war as ministers against developers, councils and anyone else that can be blamed for the government’s failures in housing during the past 14 years.

Things reached a high (or low) point in February when a press notice announcing changes to brownfield planning policy took aim at councils in general and London mayor Sadiq Khan in particular.

Local authorities are too bureaucratic, it said. Not flexible like the government, which is fuelled by common sense and building record numbers of homes, if you ignore the homes it hadn’t built before it started building them. And so it went on.

Never mind. Pretty soon all government press officers will put their feet up prior to the election. Their work will be done. And what’s more they can rest assured that, ultimately, voters will target their anger at politicians, not shoot the messenger.