Housing White Paper Released – “Fixing our Broken Housing Market”

Local authorities will receive more powers to pressure developers into building on land they own, the communities and local government secretary Sajid Javid said.

Measures aimed at fixing Britain’s “broken housing market” are being unveiled by ministers. In short, we have to build more of the right houses in the right places.

‘The current planning system is arduous and geared towards large scale operations that have both the time and funds to successfully navigate it, when the reality is that it is small to medium sized developers that can bring to fruition the innovative solutions needed to help build more homes.

“His statement this afternoon will desperately disappoint millions of people struggling month to month with the cost of the housing crisis”.

Paula Higgins, chief executive of HomeOwners Alliance, said: “After years of policy-making which has focused mostly on inflating demand, it appears the government is keen to tackle the UK’s chronic shortage of housing”.

“Instead the government should look again at the tax rises imposed by the previous Chancellor on landlords which will only act as a disincentive for the hundreds of thousands of smaller landlords to get more properties on the rental market”.

Housing Minister Gavin Barwell said: “We owe it to our children and our grandchildren to fix the broken housing market problems and help them find a home of their own”.

But Javid stepped back from giving the go-ahead to build on greenbelt land.

He said: “We need a White Paper which controls, constrains and influences the behaviour of builders and lenders”.

Currently, around 60% of new homes are built by just 10 companies. But some felt at the time that there was a worrying lack of detail. Indeed, data shows that the average length of time tenants spend in their property is four years.

Councils meanwhile will need to produce a realistic housing plan and review it at least every five years.

The government’s landmark housing white paper, released today, announced radical reforms for development, planning, and construction. Now permission lapses after three years. “We will provide clarity over future rent levels”. Now 60 percent of houses are built by 10 companies.

The fund will supply loans to SME builders, custom builders and offsite construction firms to hit its target of SMEs building 25,000 new homes at the end of this parliament, and 225,000 in the longer term.

Nick Leeming, Jackson-Stops & Staff Chairman, said: “Today the government has thrown in the towel on Britain as a nation of home owners”.

There are now an estimated 4.3m tenants in the private rental market.

The White Paper aims to give renters a better deal, offering them more security, and to ensure that developers offer more homes at an affordable rent, according to unofficial leaks reportedly seen by The Observer newspaper.

Any loss of green belt must be offset by higher contributions from developers or improvement to existing green belt land, it said.

“It’s interesting to see the reduction from three to two years for implementation of planning permissions as this will encourage construction and discourage land banking, and I believe this will have an impact on the design approach to some schemes”.

As well as getting tough on developers, the government will target local authorities who are not enabling development to go ahead.

Asked about concerns over whether it would be hard to ensure consistency and transparency in how councils assess demand, a source in the communities department said that the authorities would be consulted on a “new approach”.