London (Parliament Politics Magazine) – A £500 million Budget cash boost will pay for 5,000 affordable houses to be constructed, Rachel Reeves has reported.
The funds for the Affordable Homes Programme will be a portion of a scheduled £5 billion investment designed to produce on Labour’s house-building pledge to build 1.5 million new homes. The Treasury also affirmed that Right to Buy discounts will be cut in an unprecedented attempt to prevent council house tenants from purchasing their own homes and keep the stock in local authorities’ hands.
Under projects to be announced Budget, the discount of 70 per cent available to those desiring to buy their council house would be slashed to about 25 per cent. Councils will also be capable of keeping 100 per cent of the receipts from deals to reinvest in new social housing. Ministers also submit a new five-year social housing rent cap – placed at inflation plus 1 per cent – to give the sector better long-term certainty on funding and permit it to invest in thousands of new homes.
How does the government plan to tackle the housing crisis?
Ms Reeves stated: “We need to fix the housing crisis in this country. It’s created a generation locked out of the property market, torn apart communities and put the brakes on economic growth. We are rebuilding Britain by ramping up house building and delivering the 1.5 million new homes we so badly need.”
Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary expressed: “This is a further significant step in our plan to get Britain building again, backing the sector, so they can help us deliver a social and affordable housing boom, supporting millions of people up and down the country into a safe, affordable and decent home they can be proud of.”
How many new homes are expected under Labour’s plan?
Around £128 million will be reserved for new housing projects including up to 28,000 new builds currently stopped by river pollution where clean-ups will now go ahead; 3,000 energy-efficient homes across the nation and 2,000 new homes in North Liverpool. A £56 million investment at Liverpool Central Docks will also produce office, retail, leisure and hotel facilities alongside the new homes as a component of a brownfield-first approach.
Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, stated: “We strongly accommodate the £500 million top-up to the affordable homes agenda. This vital injection of funding, which we’ve been urgently reaching for, will support housing associations to persist in delivering much-needed inexpensive homes in the immediate term and prevent a collapse in delivery.”