Grant Shapps: 'We must build the homes this country needs'

Published by webmaster for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Featured

In his first column for 24housing magazine, Housing Minister Grant Shapps discusses the thinking behind the Government’s Housing Strategy and reveals details of a new development competition to be launched nationally this year.

It's a pleasure to be writing my first column for 24housing, especially as this is such an exciting time for housing following my recent announcement of Government’s plans to get the market back on track.

This Government has inherited a broken housing system, in which lenders won’t lend, builders can’t build, and buyers can’t buy.  Over the past 18 months, the focus of my attentions as Housing Minister has been to get Britain building again, offer help for people aspiring to get onto the housing ladder and restore fairness in our system of social housing.  And at the end of November, alongside the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, I was able to set out our vision for housing with the publication of the Housing Strategy.

At the heart of the Strategy is a new-build indemnity scheme, which will offer a useful alternative to the Bank of Mum and Dad for those people struggling to get deposits together and take a step on the housing ladder.  Due to be launched this Spring, under this new industry-led scheme house builders and we in Government will provide security for the loan, enabling homebuyers to secure mortgages on newly-built homes with just a five per cent deposit – a far cry from the average 20 percent deposit they would currently have to find.   

Shortly I’ll also publish plans to increase the average Right to Buy discount to up to half the value of the home, bringing home ownership more within reach of social housing tenants. But for the first time, the receipt from each additional sale will be used to pay down the existing housing debt and fund new affordable homes – so that every home sold will be replaced by a new affordable rented home.

But if we want to help a new generation to get on the property ladder and become homeowners, we must get the homes this country needs built. That’s why the Housing Strategy also includes plans for a £400million Get Britain Building fund, which will help get builders back onto stalled sites and get these developments back on track after the devastating impact of the 2008 credit crunch.  

But of course with so many high-profile policies contained within the Housing Strategy, it’s inevitable that others will attract much less attention. For example, up to an additional £30million is being made available to support self-builders – an industry worth an annual £3.6billion to the national economy, but one that still lags behind much of Europe, and many other developed countries. This extra cash will be available to offer short-term project finance but on a repayable basis, helping people to realise their dream of building their own home, which for too many is considered more of a fantasy than something they could achieve in reality.

In addition, I’ll shortly publish plans for a competition to enable communities, local authorities and developers to come forward with their own proposals for locally-planned large scale developments. The size of these developments will vary from a few hundred homes to a few thousand, but those we agree to support will all benefit from measures such as a streamlined planning process and help in addressing their infrastructure requirements.
 
But the Housing Strategy also includes measures to make the system of social housing in this country much fairer. For too long, thousands of families have been left languishing on waiting lists thanks to a lazy consensus that has prevented the very reform that the system needs.

But the Localism Act includes giving councils the flexibility to offer fixed tenancies, reflecting the needs of their new tenants. And it’s why in the Housing Strategy we’ve announced plans to introduce “Pay to Stay”, so that councils can offer tenants on high incomes such as £100,000 a year, who do not need subsidised rents, two options: either to find alternative accommodation and free up their social home, or pay closer to market rents for their property.

All these elements of the Housing Strategy will of course be supported by the New Homes Bonus, so for the first time communities see the benefits of growth in their area as we match the council tax raised on new properties for the following six years, and extra cash for new affordable homes.

Grant Shapps’ column appears in the January edition of 24housing magazine.