Are the main parties' position on housebuilding any clearer than their approach on Brexit? Who’s promising what on development and who can be expected to deliver? Pearce Branigan digests the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats’ manifesto commitments and their implications for the property and development sectors

With the present Parliamentary deadlock over how best, if at all, to leave the EU, the forthcoming plebiscite has rightly been branded as “The Brexit Election”. Though Brexit has consumed much of the coverage so far in the campaign, all the UK political parties will be seeking to implement a domestic programme for government, all of which will have implications for the development and housebuilding sector.

Conservative Party

Wishing to avoid the mistakes of 2017, the Conservatives’ have returned to a more traditional approach on housing, having honed their messaging with more clear-cut policies, reaffirming themselves as the party of home ownership with their call to “rebalance the housing market towards more home ownership – while ensuring fairness for the new generation of renters.”

Their commitment to deliver one million homes by 2024, with an aspiration to reach 300,000 per annum by the middle of the decade avoids going into detail around tenure type and composition, with no definitive quota for social housing.

Announcements such as the 5% mortgage deposits and Lifetime Rental Deposits are targeted at those young professional voters the party secured in 2015, though failed to retain in 2017, through supporting renters onto the housing ladder and into the Conservative voter-base.

Other announcements seek to follow the other recent strand in Conservative messaging, namely to allay concerns amongst their suburban and rural base towards housing development. The 30% local discount for first time buyers and the introduction of an ‘infrastructure first’ approach to development is intended to respond to the all too frequent criticism voiced by local communities, that new housing developments are not intended to be populated by people local to the area and that improvements to infrastructure must come into effect before any increase in local population.

Meanwhile, the Better Deal for Renters, including measures such as the ban on no fault evictions, is intended as a domestic boon to pro-Brexit voters in traditional Labour areas, where the Conservatives envisage they can turn blue through a Disraeli-esque ‘One Nation’ approach.

Full announcements include:

General

•        Deliver at least another million homes in the next five years, making further progress towards the target of 300,000 new houses a year by the mid-2020s.

•        Implement and legislate all the recommendations of the Hackitt Review and the first phase of the Grenfell inquiry.

•        Support the removal of unsafe cladding on high rise residential properties

Planning

•        Simplify the planning system for the general public and small builders

•        Support modern methods of construction

•        Support community housing and self-build by helping people find plots of land and access the Help to Buy scheme.

•        Support communities living on council estates who want to take ownership of the land and buildings they live in.

•        Support the creation of new homes that have low energy bills and which support our environmental targets.

•        All new streets to be lined with trees.

•        Encourage Proptech to make housing more affordable, accessible, and suitable for disabled people and an ageing population.

•        Protect and enhance the Green Belt.

•        Improve poor quality land, increase biodiversity and make the countryside more accessible for local community use.

•        Continue to prioritise brownfield development, particularly for the regeneration of cities and towns.

•        Amend planning rules so that infrastructure improvements are implemented alongside housing development, prior to residents entering new developments, to be delivered through a new £10 billion Single

Housing Infrastructure Fund.

•        Ask every community to decide on its own design standards for new development.

Devolution

•        Publish an English Devolution White Paper in 2020.

•        Encourage greater levels of foreign investment into the UK, through regional drivers such as Northern Powerhouse, Western Gateway and Midlands Engine.

•        Invite proposals from local areas for growth bodies across England.

Private renters

•        Reform shared ownership, simplify products by setting a single standard for all housing associations.

•        Bring in a Better Deal for Renters, including abolishing ‘no fault’ evictions and only requiring one ‘lifetime’ deposit which moves with the tenant.

•        Strengthen rights of possession for landlords.

Home Ownership

•        Create a new market in long-term fixed rate mortgages, requiring only 5% deposits, making it easier to get on the housing ladder

•        Under a new First Home scheme, councils can use developers’ contributions to discount homes in perpetuity by a third for local people.

•        Commit to renewing the Affordable Homes Programme.

•        Bring in a stamp duty surcharge on non-UK resident buyers.

•        Continue reforms to leasehold:

-          including implementing the ban on the sale of new leasehold homes;

-          restricting ground rents to a peppercorn;

-          providing necessary mechanisms of redress for tenants

Council and Social Homes

•        Maintain both the commitment to a Right to Buy for all council tenants and voluntary Right to Buy scheme agreed with housing associations.

•        Bring forward a Social Housing White Paper which will:

-          Set out further measures to empower tenants and support the continued supply of social homes.

-          Include measures to provide greater redress, better regulation and improve the quality of social housing

Homelessness

•        Fully enforcing the Homelessness Reduction Act.

•        Expanding the Rough Sleeping Initiative and Housing First.

•        Bring together local services to meet the health and housing needs of people sleeping on the streets.

Labour Party

The Labour Party have sought to introduce a series of radical measures to boost social housebuilding, expand public ownership of housing and protecting tenants’ rights, as well as seeking to overturn a number of key measures implemented by the Conservatives since 2010, including Right to Buy. The emphasis of their commitments sees the party place a higher priority on offering security for residents across the social and private rental markets, whilst placing a lesser priority on delivering home ownership as the end goal.

The Party have persistently viewed the sale of council properties as a determinant for the current housing pressures. It comes as no surprise that their remedy for the current housing shortages is to prioritise local authority-led approach with the rapid expansion of council house building, aiming to deliver at least 100,000 per annum.

Ramifications for housebuilders include the introduction of a new ‘use it or lose it’ tax against developers who fail to deliver homes after gaining permission, ending the permitted development of offices to residential alongside introducing tougher rules for urban regeneration, requiring all residents to be offered a new property on the same site and terms.

Full announcements include:

•        Create a new Department for Housing, make Homes England a more accountable national housing agency and put councils in the driving seat.

•        New ‘use it or lose it’ taxes against developers on stalled housing developments.

•        Keep the Land Registry in public ownership.

•        Prioritise brownfield sites ahead of green belt for development.

•        Introduce a new zero-carbon homes standard for all new homes.

•        Review planning guidance for developments in flood risk areas.

Council and Social Homes

•        Build at least 150,000 council and social homes per annum, with 100,000 of these built by councils for social rent.

•        Replace the current definition of affordable by linking it to local incomes.

•        End the conversion of office blocks to homes that sidestep planning permission through ‘permitted development’.

•        Ending Right to Buy along with the forced conversion of social rented homes to so-called ‘affordable rent’.

•        Give councils powers and funding to buy back homes from private landlords.

•        Make sure regeneration only goes ahead when it has the consent of residents, and that all residents are offered a new property on the same site and terms.

•        Fund a new Decent Homes programme to bring all council and housing association homes up to a good standard.

Home Ownership

•        Build more low-cost homes, reserved for first-time buyers, with prices linked to local incomes.

•        Reform Help to Buy to focus on first-time buyers on ordinary incomes.

•        Introduce a levy on overseas companies buying housing, while giving local people ‘first dibs’ on new homes built in their area.

•        Give councils new powers to tax properties empty for over a year.

•        End the sale of new leasehold properties, abolish fees and conditions, and give leaseholders the right to buy their freehold.

•        Introduce equivalent rights for freeholders on privately owned estates.

Private Renters

•        Introduce rent controls, open-ended tenancies, and new, binding minimum standards.

•        Cap rents with inflation, giving cities powers to cap rents further.

•        Introduce new, open-ended tenancies to stop ‘no fault’ evictions.

•        Fund new renters’ unions.

Fire Safety

•        Introduce a £1 billion Fire Safety Fund to fit sprinklers and other fire safety measures in all high rise council and housing association tower blocks.

•        Enforce the replacement of flammable cladding, while introducing mandatory building standards and guidance, inspected and enforced by fully trained Fire and Rescue Service fire safety officers.

Homelessness

•        Labour will end rough sleeping within five years through a national plan driven by a prime minister-led taskforce.

•        An additional £1bn a year for councils’ homelessness services

•        The expansion and upgrade of hostels.

•        8,000 additional homes will be made available for those with a history of rough sleeping.

•        The repeal of the Vagrancy Act and amendments to antisocial behaviour legislation that allows it to be used against people because they are homeless.

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats have approached their manifesto with a clear social-focus, emphasising the needs of existing tenants and those seeking access to property market, with little consideration for the private market. Their landmark pledge to 300,000 homes per annum places greater priority building 100,000 for social rent, which will be part-funded by the £130bn capital infrastructure budget, with little comment on the exact nature or tenure composition of the c. 200,000 homes to come forward in the private sector.

On planning, the proposed reforms offer very little material change from existing practices or notable reform. With an extensive power-base across local government, it is unsurprising that the Liberal Democrats have sought to strengthen council’s powers in the manifesto. On homeownership, the party’s Additionally, their measures to introduce a new Rent to Own model will also have repercussions for housing association’s stock, though it has been mooted that these will be replaced with new homes as part of the 100,000 new social homes per annum.

Full announcements include:

•        Build 300,000 new homes per annum, with at least 100,000 homes being for social rent each year.

•        Fund the building of social homes with investment from the £130 billion capital infrastructure budget.

•        Build new houses to zero-carbon standards and cut fuel bills through a ten-year programme to reduce energy consumption from all the UK’s buildings.

•        Devolve full control of Right to Buy to local councils.

 Homeownership

•        Help people who cannot afford a deposit by introducing a new Rent to Own model for social housing where rent payments give tenants an increasing stake in the property, owning it outright after 30 years.

•        Allow local authorities to increase council tax by up to 500 per cent where homes are being bought as second homes with a stamp duty surcharge on overseas residents purchasing such properties.

Private rental sector

•        Help young people into the rental market by establishing a new Help to Rent scheme to provide government-backed tenancy deposit loans for all first-time renters under 30.

•        Promote longer tenancies of three years or more with an inflation-linked annual rent increase built in, to give tenants security and limit rent hikes.

•        Improve protections against rogue landlords through mandatory licensing.

Social rental sector

•        Set clearer standards for homes that are socially rented.

•        Require complaints to be dealt with in a timely manner.

•        Proactively enforce the regulations that are intended to protect social renters.

•        Fully recognise tenant panels so that renters have a voice in landlord governance.