Chancellor Philip Hammond has pledged to build 300,000 homes a year as part of a series of government housebuilding policies revealed ahead of the Budget on Wednesday.
In a series of interviews over the weekend, he outlined five policies designed to address the housing crisis:
A new target of 300,000 homes a year. “The challenge here is affordability, and I think experts generally agree that to start to make inroads on the affordability problem, we’ve got to be sustainably delivering around 300,000 homes a year, on average, across the housing cycle,” Hammond told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday.
No changes to green belt protection, but money to clean up industrial land. “We have made very clear commitments about protecting the green belt and we will maintain that protection of the green belt, but there are lots of things we can do using planning powers, using intervention powers to get planning permissions that have been given built out,” Hammond said. However, he has pledged to make more land available by paying to clean up polluted industrial sites for housebuilding.
A more interventionist approach to get developers building. The government will launch an inquiry into “housebuilders land banking, speculators hoarding land and local authorities blocking development” to report next spring, Hammond told The Sunday Times. “There are, in London alone, 270,000 residential planning permissions that have not today been built,” Hammond said. “We need to understand why these planning permissions that are going up all over the country, that will continue to increase across the country, why they are not being built out. We’ll intervene – we’ll use money, we’ll use the powers of the state, we’ll use the powers of the planning system. But we are determined to get those missing homes built.”
Access to finance for SME housebuilders. “We’ve got to recreate the small and medium-sized housebuilding sector which used to exist in this country but was wiped out in the financial crisis,” Hammond said. “We need small building firms in every town and city around the country, as well as the big national housebuilders. We’ve got to make sure they can access the finance that we need.” Hammond has also pledged to get town hall chiefs to allocate small pockets of land for development by small builders.
No comment on cuts to stamp duty for first-time buyers. Hammond wouldn’t reveal any specific tax measures which would feature in the Budget. However, he said: “We must do more [to help young first-time buyers], we recognise there’s a challenge there and on Wednesday I will set out how we are going to address it.”
Chancellor Philip Hammond has pledged to build 300,000 homes a year as part of a series of government housebuilding policies revealed ahead of the Budget on Wednesday.
In a series of interviews over the weekend, he outlined five policies designed to address the housing crisis:
A new target of 300,000 homes a year. “The challenge here is affordability, and I think experts generally agree that to start to make inroads on the affordability problem, we’ve got to be sustainably delivering around 300,000 homes a year, on average, across the housing cycle,” Hammond told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday.
No changes to green belt protection, but money to clean up industrial land. “We have made very clear commitments about protecting the green belt and we will maintain that protection of the green belt, but there are lots of things we can do using planning powers, using intervention powers to get planning permissions that have been given built out,” Hammond said. However, he has pledged to make more land available by paying to clean up polluted industrial sites for housebuilding.
A more interventionist approach to get developers building. The government will launch an inquiry into “housebuilders land banking, speculators hoarding land and local authorities blocking development” to report next spring, Hammond told The Sunday Times. “There are, in London alone, 270,000 residential planning permissions that have not today been built,” Hammond said. “We need to understand why these planning permissions that are going up all over the country, that will continue to increase across the country, why they are not being built out. We’ll intervene – we’ll use money, we’ll use the powers of the state, we’ll use the powers of the planning system. But we are determined to get those missing homes built.”
Access to finance for SME housebuilders. “We’ve got to recreate the small and medium-sized housebuilding sector which used to exist in this country but was wiped out in the financial crisis,” Hammond said. “We need small building firms in every town and city around the country, as well as the big national housebuilders. We’ve got to make sure they can access the finance that we need.” Hammond has also pledged to get town hall chiefs to allocate small pockets of land for development by small builders.
No comment on cuts to stamp duty for first-time buyers. Hammond wouldn’t reveal any specific tax measures which would feature in the Budget. However, he said: “We must do more [to help young first-time buyers], we recognise there’s a challenge there and on Wednesday I will set out how we are going to address it.”
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