AMT Public

With a general election planned in 2010 this policy to practice paper attempts to summarise the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats policy approach to providing housing, market and affordable. This section has been taken from relevant pages on each Party’s website.  Content is dependent on information that was in the public domain.

The Conservative Party

• Policy Green Paper No. 10, ‘Strong Foundations: Building Homes and Communities the Conservatives set out their vision for a sustainable housing market.
• Approach is to put communities in charge of their development, and give everyone the chance to own all or some of their own home.

Community-led housing

• Abolish regional planning system and regional housing targets;
• Incentivise new house-building by matching local authorities’ council tax take for each new house built for six years – with special incentives for affordable housing;
• Allow the creation of new bodies – Local Housing Trusts – with new freedom to develop homes for local people, as long as there is strong community backing;
• Broaden access to the government’s databases of surplus public sector land and buildings, to enable members of the public to identify vacant government land that should be available for house-building.

The Planning System

• Move away from centralised approach to enable community-led development where local people become part of the solution.
• Ensure that the views of local residents are taken into account at the start of the planning process with pre-application consultations between developers and local people mandatory for major applications;
• Enable councils to revise their current local plans to protect Green Belt land and prevent the imposition of eco-towns against local wishes.

Social housing that helps not hinders

• Deliver sufficient new housing (both market and affordable)
• Re-focus role of  social housing to have a positive impact on people’s aspirations and mobility
• Encourage social tenants to become owner occupiers and for those who don’t want to or can’t leave the sector increase opportunities for geographical mobility.
• Pilot ‘Right to Move’; re-introduce a comprehensive national mobility scheme;
• Offer 10% equity share to social tenants in their social rented property which can be cashed when they move the sector;
• Strengthen shared ownership options by encouraging flexible equity stakes;
• Greater private sector involvement in shared ownership.

Housing that contributes to a low carbon economy

• Reduce carbon emissions from housing and dramatically improve the energy efficiency of existing housing stock.
• Scraping Home Information Packs (HIPs);
• Ensure every gas and electricity bill contains information which allows each household to compare their energy consumption with average households of a comparable size;
• Support the ‘Merton Rule’ which gives local authorities the powers to set renewable and low carbon energy targets for new development.

The Labour Party

• Everyone should have access to a decent home, at an affordable price, in the area where they want to live.

• Progress since 1997 in tackling Britain’s housing challenges include  turning around a £19 billion maintenance backlog in Britain’s social housing stock; enabling over a million more home owners; delivering  major improvements in social housing conditions, and taken action to cut homelessness by two thirds.
• In difficult economic times support for borrowers facing difficulties, and promoting the long-term stability of the housing market.
• Action to support homeowners through the downturn, introducing the Homeowner Mortgage Support Scheme and other measures to help prevent repossessions.
• Measures in place new arrangements to make it easier for local authorities and housing associations to deliver a new generation of affordable housing, while working to support the construction industry.
• Key achievements:

• The Decent Homes scheme has helped to deliver over £20 billion investment for major improvements in social housing conditions.
• Over three quarters of all new homes are now built on previously developed brownfield land.
• Rough sleeping has dropped by over two thirds and homelessness is at its lowest level since the early 1980s.
• Abolished stamp duty for people buying houses through one of the existing shared ownership schemes.
• Allocated government funding to buy up unsold properties to use as affordable housing.
• Establishing Local Authority Housing Companies, giving local authorities a greater say and role in building new affordable housing.
• £1 billion package of support for homeowners and first time buyers to: Help first time buyers get onto the housing ladder with increased shared equity support; Help homeowners in difficulty; Support the house-building industry; and Bring forward £400 million of government spending to deliver up to 5,500 new social rented homes over the next eighteen months.
• By 2016 all new homes should be zero carbon.
• Arrangements in place to allow local authorities and housing associations to start delivering a new generation of social housing.
• Budget 2009 £600 million funding package was announced to build more homes through unlocking sites currently sitting dormant.

Liberal democrats

Provide affordable homes

• Release public sector land to Community Land Trusts, taking out the cost of buying land to develop, so they can build thousands of affordable homes for their local communities.
• End tax on Council tenants’ rent, allowing local councils to reinvest rent in building new social homes in their area.
• Cut VAT on repair and renovation to encourage developers to repair and reuse empty buildings and brownfield land, rather than always building over the countryside.
• In areas where second homes are overwhelming the local housing market and harming local communities, councils will be given the power to require planning permission before turning another full-time home into a holiday home.
• Devolve powers and responsibilities to Communities who will be free to set their own priorities and targets for affordable housing, and will be given flexibility to tackle the issues they face by giving a power of general competence to councils.

Affordable housing in rural areas

• Provide more homes for local people by increasing councils’ planning powers over second homes and promoting schemes such as Equity Mortgage affordable homes and ‘Home on the Farm’ which encourage farmers to convert existing building into affordable housing.

Warm homes for all

• Will make homes dependent on fuel oil a priority for micro-renewable energy and energy efficiency measures.

Axe the Council Tax and replace it with the fairer local income tax

Local decision making

• Ensure local taxes are spent locally and give people a real say over things like local NHS, neighbourhood policing and new housing.
• Putting communities in charge – Return Business Rates to local control to decide how locally raised taxes are spent.

Regional Development Agencies – Take powers about where new houses should be built and back to local communities.

Go to Part XI: Next steps