Posted 06.09.12
The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister announced today a £300 million housing and planning package that aims to deliver 15,000 new affordable homes.
The measures include removing section 106 agreements for developers where they can prove it makes a site unviable.
The measures announced include:
Removing restrictions on house builders to help unlock 75,000 homes currently stalled due to sites being commercially unviable.
Developers who can prove that council's costly affordable housing requirements make the project unviable will see them removed.
New legislation for Government guarantees of up to £40 billion worth of major infrastructure projects and up to £10 billion of new homes.
The Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill will include guaranteeing the debt of housing associations and private sector developers.
Calling time on poor performing town hall planning departments, putting the worst into 'special measures' if they have failed to improve the speed and quality of their work and allowing developers to bypass councils.
More applications also will go into a fast track appeal process.
The Prime Minister said:
"The measures announced today show this Government is serious about rolling its sleeves up and doing all it can to kick-start the economy.
"Some of the proposals are controversial; others have been a long time in coming. But along with our Housing Strategy, they provide a comprehensive plan to unleash one of the biggest homebuilding programmes this country has seen in a generation.
"That means more investment around the county; more jobs for our people; and more young families able to realise their dreams and get on the housing ladder."
The Deputy Prime Minister said:
"This is a Coalition Government, determined to get on with the job of delivering a healthier economy.
"Today's major boost to housing and planning will make it easier to build a home, easier to buy a first home and easier to extend a home. A boost that will get Britain building again. Building thousands of affordable homes and generating thousands of new jobs."
Posted 14.09.12
The Housing Voice - an alliance of campaigning organisations, including Citizens Advice, Child Poverty Action Group, the National Housing Federation, and the Trades Union Congress - have release the report of its year-long inquiry, To have or have not: taking responsibility for tomorrow's affordable homes.
The underlying message of the report is that current and previous governments have simply failed to take responsibility for meeting the housing needs of those who are most in need.
The independent inquiry held four hearings across England and heard the voices of more than 60 organisations and nearly 3,000 people.
The report makes ten emergency recommendations which the Government could act upon immediately to help tackle the housing crisis - as well as other legislative and funding measures that the Government needs to take on board in next year's Comprehensive Spending Review.
It also calls for a National Commission on Affordable Housing to report before the 2015 General Election.
The Inquiry recommends:
Releasing public sector land for development of affordable homes, including social rent, shared ownership and co-operative homes.
The report defines affordable housing as comfortable, secure homes in sound condition that are available to rent or buy without leaving households unable to afford their other basic needs (e.g. food, clothing, heating, transport and social life).
By affordable housing the inquiry has therefore been referring to all types of housing, including owner occupation. Not, as is sometimes the case, focussing purely on social rented housing.
Lord Larry Whitty, who chaired the Inquiry, said:
"The evidence we have received demonstrates that the housing market throughout England is breaking down. There is serious dysfunction in all regions and all parts of the housing market.
"Successive governments have prioritised owner occupation, but it is now in decline and we are reaching a tipping point when the average age of first time buyers could soon be over 40 - potentially spelling an end for the traditional 25 year mortgage.
"The housing have nots are being shut out of owner occupation and consigned to the private rented sector, which by default is getting bigger and bigger but where families do not have security of tenure and face ever increasing rents as well as highly variable standards, sometimes unacceptably poor.
"All of this reflects the failure of successive governments to deliver sufficient new housing - housing starts remain at their lowest peacetime level. Building more homes requires substantial new resources in both the public and the private sectors.
"There is clearly a case for urgent, concerted and cross party action at local and national level. We need a strategic - not piecemeal - approach and one which has wide public support and can therefore be sustained."
