British Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged to make sure that more new homes are built in the UK and said that more announcements can be expected in the coming months.
She pointed out that the number of new homes delivered each year has been increasing since 2010, but she acknowledged that more we can be done to build the homes the country needs.
‘For decades we simply have not been building enough homes, nor have we been building them quickly enough, and we have seen prices rise. We must get back into the business of building the good quality new homes for people who need them most,’ she said.
‘That is why I have made it my mission to build the homes the country needs and take personal charge of the Government’s response. In coming weeks and months, my Government will be going further to ensure that we build more homes, more quickly. This will be a long journey and it will take time for us to fix the broken housing market but I am determined to build a Britain fit for the future,’ she added.
Meanwhile Communities Secretary Sajid Javid on a visit to Bristol promised there would be more housing across all tenures, including more social housing. ‘The generation crying out for help with housing is not over entitled. They don’t want the world handed to them on a plate. They want simple fairness, moral justice, the opportunity to play by the same rules enjoyed by those who came before them,’ he said.
‘Without affordable, secure, safe housing we risk creating a rootless generation, drifting from one short term tenancy to the next, never staying long enough to play a role in their community,’ he added.
He pointed out that the Housing White Paper published in February set out a broad vision and described the scale of the challenge and the need for action on many fronts. ‘Since then we’ve been putting it into action, laying the foundations for hundreds of thousands more homes,’ Javid explained.
‘But there are many, many faults in our housing market, dating back many, many years. If you only fix one you’ll make some progress, but not enough. This is a big problem and we have to think big,’ he added.
He announced that the Government is taking housing associations’ debt off the balance sheet, ensuring housing associations have a stable investment environment to build more homes and said that this builds on the Government’s ongoing work to tackle the challenges in the housing sector including.
He also announced that the affordable housing budget will be increased by an additional £2 billion to over £9 billion, to deliver more homes at social rent and potentially leverage investment from housing associations and councils of up to £5 billion.
There will be a long term rent deal for councils and housing associations in England from 2020 to support them to build more homes and Javid also said that of the £3 billion Home Building Fund created last year to build more houses across England over £1.7 billion has now been committed, and will result in over 100,000 new homes built across England.
He will be meeting more big and small developers, local authorities and housing associations to ask them to all play their part in increasing the number of homes being built. The Prime Minister and the Communities Secretary recently held a meeting with developers and housing associations in Downing Street to discuss actions needed to remove the barriers they are facing in building new homes.
Since April 2010, around 346,000 affordable homes have been delivered, including 240,000 for rent. More than twice as much council housing has been built since 2010 than in the previous 13 years, Javid confirmed.
