Proposed Government Reforms for New Homes

July 25, 2024

Land Director, Katherine Gray, has shared her insights on Labour’s ambitious plans to improve availability of housing in the area.

The lack of housing has long been a topic of conversation, and area of focus for the UK Government. So it came as no surprise to see promises for the building of more homes in both the Conservative and Labour manifestos leading up to the election.

Labour’s manifesto revealed plans to build 1.5 million new homes over the next parliamentary period. This might sound like a simple enough goal, yet to achieve this aim, the whole process needs a review. The building of these homes is straightforward enough, the key challenge is acquiring planning permission for appropriate new developments.

Labour plans to streamline the planning process by:

• Updating the Planning Policy Framework.
• Restoring mandatory housing targets.
• Ensuring planning authorities have up-to-date local plans.
• Funding additional planning officers.
• The fast-track of approvals for urban brownfield sites.
• Prioritising the release of lower quality ‘grey belt’ land over ‘green belt’ land
• Building generations of new towns.
• Reforming compulsory purchase rules to improve land assembly, speed up site delivery, and deliver housing.
• Providing more affordable homes.
• Implementing solutions to unlock building where land is affected by nutrient neutrality, without weakening environmental protections.

If successfully implemented, these reforms could boost the availability of new homes and ease the current housing crisis.

For now, we will wait to see how these proposals are incorporated into the Autumn budget, if not implemented beforehand. Then we can discover what the future holds for new homes in the UK.

Source:
Labour Party Manifesto 2024: Our plan to change Britain – The Labour Party

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