3
PRO INSTALLER OCTOBER 2016
PRO NEWS
@proinstaller1
LORDS WARNING ON
HOUSING CRISIS
The government must lift its target by 50% and build 300,000 homes
each year to tackle the housing crisis, says a House of Lords committee.
The committee said
local authorities and
housing associations
must be freed to build
substantial numbers of
homes for rent and for
sale.
In its report ‘Building
More Homes,’ the cross-party House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee
criticised the government’s
housing policy for:
• Setting a new homes
target which will fail to
meet demand for new
homes or moderate the
rate of house price increases.
NEW
• Restricting local authorities’
access to funding to build
more social housing.
• Creating uncertainty in
the already dysfunctional
housing market by frequent changes to tax rules
and subsidies for house
purchases, reductions in
social rents, and the extension of the Right to Buy.
All these changes reduce
the supply of homes for
those who need low cost
rental accommodation.
• A narrow focus on home
ownership which neglects
those who rent their
home.
The committee makes recommendations to address
the housing crisis, including:
• Lifting of restraints on
local authority borrowing.
Local authorities should
be free to borrow to fund
social housebuilding as
they are other building
programmes.
• Charging council tax on
development that is not
completed quickly. The
government’s reliance
on private developers to
meet its target of new
homes is misguided. The
private sector housebuild-
ing market’s eight largest
builders build 50% of new
homes, and their business
model is to restrict the
volume of housebuilding
to maximise their profit
margin.
• Maximising use of public
land. The government
must take decisive steps
to build on the very
substantial holdings of
surplus publicly owned
land.
• Giving local authorities
the power to increase
planning fees.
www.parliament.uk
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15/09/2016 12:02