The government will invest an additional £32mn across housing and planning to “unlock” thousands of homes across the country.
In the Autumn Statement, chancellor Jeremy Hunt said that the government would take “further decisions to unlock the building of more homes”.
The aim of this is being to build homes in the right places, where people want to live and work, which will support economic growth across the UK and make home ownership a reality for more people.
To achieve this, there will be additional funding to tackle planning backlogs in Local Planning Authorities.
This will be alongside further reforms to “streamline” the system through a new Permitted Development Right to enable one house to be converted into two homes.
The funding will also hope to accelerate the delivery of new, “high quality” housing in Cambridge, Leeds and London.
As part of this, the government stated it will support the Cambridge Delivery Group to drive the “long-term vision” for Cambridge by exploring the case for a development corporation.
It was also confirmed that £110mn will be made available through the Local Nutrient Mitigation Fund.
This will support LPAs affected by nutrient neutrality rules to deliver “high quality local nutrient offsetting schemes”, and will unlock up to 40,000 homes over the next five years.
Affordable Homes Guarantee Scheme
A reaffirmation of commitment was also made by the government to building affordable homes by building on the successes of the Affordable Homes Guarantee Scheme via a £3bn extension.
This will help the scheme deliver 20,000 new homes, as well as “improving the quality and efficiency of thousands more”.
The government additionally stated that it is committed to supporting home movers with a range of measures to improve the buying and selling process.
This includes pilots to develop property tech products and digitise local council property data.
Track record
Hunt commented that more homes were completed in 2021/2022 “than any other single year of the last Labour government.”
This comes after analysis from Searchland reporting that Conservative housing ministers have overseen the delivery of 217,134 new homes, equating to an average of 1,419 per month.
This was compared to Labour housing ministers which have seen a total of 136,931 homes built, or 878 per month.
However, the research specified that, of the 21 housing ministers analysed by Searchland, 14 were Conservative while nine were from the Labour party.
tom.dunstan@ft.com
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