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The Big Three’s Housing Manifestos

  • 7 years ago

The dust hasn’t even begun to settle after the UK’s General Election earlier this month – will we have a minority Tory-DUP government? Will Jeremy Corbyn make good his promise to storm Number 10, or will we see the LibDemsrecover after Tim Farron’s resignation to form a coalition with anyone who’s willing?

Housing is a huge issue, especially social housing, and all three big parties made it a priority in their manifestos, so here’s a rundown of what we could expect from a Tory, Labour, LibDem or coalition government.

Labour

Labour will create a new Department for Housing to try to resolve decades of failure.

Around 100,000 council and association homes will be built each year and the Conservative sell-off of existing social housing stock will stop.

There will be 4,000 new homes for people who have been homeless.

There will be no more rent rises that outstrip inflation and there’ll also be more three-year tenancies.

Developers will be required to go zero-carbon.

Four million homes will have extra insulation and there will be 0% interest loans so homeowners can make their own energy improvements.

Local residents will have first access to new homes on the market.

Conservatives

The Tories’ manifesto included plans to build a million homes by 2020, with another 500,000 by 2022.

There’ll be reformations of compulsory purchase so councils find it easier to buy derelict or unused land.

There’ll be some new social housing, but as yet there’s no numbers, no timescale and no visible signs of funding. Plus, the stock could be sold to city hedge funds ten years later.

They say they’ll halve rough sleeping by 2022 and end it altogether by 2027; we can only guess at how…

The LibDems

There’ll be a Help-to-Rent scheme to give people government-backed deposit loans.

They have a policy in common with Labour – insulating four million homes by 2022.

Direct funding for housebuilding so that there’ll be 300,000 new homes by 2022.

Ten new garden cities in England with zero carbon homes.

The right-to-buy pilot schemes for housing associations will be ended.

The council tax rates on second and empty homes will be doubled.

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