Labour Housing Plans

A

Air Resistance

Well-known member
Interesting to see the emphasis Starmer is putting on house building as part of his plans. I can’t help but feel just ‘bulldozing through’ the planning system is going to help though.

Housing developers need to be more heavily regulated and incentivised to build what they can at a pace. At the moment they can basically sit on land indefinitely and even once they’ve started developing, they can drip feed supply to keep up profit margins. We should be increasing supply to bring down prices and give more people somewhere decent to live at an affordable price.

Planning needs to be done on a higher footprint level, Teesside is a great example of an urban area that is being planned on a piecemeal footprint. There are many local authorities that have had to hit their targets by developing a bit on all of their towns and villages, rather than focussing on where it is needed or strategically logical to develop.

The system also needs changing to help level the rental playing field (and subsequent price increases).

What I do agree with from what was announced is protecting true green land and prioritising the ‘grey’ belt of less useful land.
 
Good luck with funding new towns along with the infrastructure and finding the teachers, Dr’s, Nurses, Police, Fire, ambulance crews, and all the other stuff needed, I can’t see the private sector helping out with that.
Building on brown field sites and within existing grey belt as he called it is fair enough. I can’t envisage one single new town will be built within the next 10 years, expansion of existing out of town estates and urban districts with a bit of clever marketing and renaming maybe.
 
Housing is done all wrong. I don't know why we do it the way we do (I presume money) but the most logical thing to do would be, instead of selling land to developers, pay them to build houses on land that the council owns. Any fluctuations in the cost of the land is retained by the council and the incentive is for the developers to build the houses quickly instead of waiting until they can get the most money for it.

coluka said:
Good luck with funding new towns along with the infrastructure and finding the teachers, Dr’s, Nurses, Police, Fire, ambulance crews, and all the other stuff needed, I can’t see the private sector helping out with that.
Building on brown field sites and within existing grey belt as he called it is fair enough. I can’t envisage one single new town will be built within the next 10 years, expansion of existing out of town estates and urban districts with a bit of clever marketing and renaming maybe.
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The number of people will remain the same. They will just spread around from high density rental areas to less dense housing areas. If you expand places the number of people that work in those services will go up as well.
 
Nano said:
Housing is done all wrong. I don't know why we do it the way we do (I presume money) but the most logical thing to do would be, instead of selling land to developers, pay them to build houses on land that the council owns. Any fluctuations in the cost of the land is retained by the council and the incentive is for the developers to build the houses quickly instead of waiting until they can get the most money for it.


The number of people will remain the same. They will just spread around from high density rental areas to less dense housing areas. If you expand places the number of people that work in those services will go up as well.
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You are spot on, the whole system of house building in this country does not serve the people or the customers only the ten or so big national builders who produce a low quality high cost home as and when the market suits them. A hole needs blowing through that little racket for a kick off.
 
Air Resistance said:
1) There are many local authorities that have had to hit their targets by developing a bit on all of their towns and villages, rather than focussing on where it is needed or strategically logical to develop.

2) The system also needs changing to help level the rental playing field (and subsequent price increases).

3) What I do agree with from what was announced is protecting true green land and prioritising the ‘grey’ belt of less useful land.
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1) Through the Local Plan process communities decide on what development is suitable for their area.
My local authority proposed large greenbelt deletions around the major city, large number of houses built & the transport infrastructure to support it.
The local community opposed this and through the local plan process overseen by an independent inspector got their proposal of smaller developments attached to existing communities outside of the greenbelt approved.

2) Extend 'Right to Buy' to people renting in the private sector. Problem solved.

3) Greenbelt is about preventing distinct communities coalescing into homongenous, low density urban sprawl. It is about preserving the openness of the spaces between communities. It has never been about protecting habitats, ancient woodland or farmers fields.

It is disingenuous of politicians & developers to talk of not preserving greenbelt because sections are of low ecological value, low bio-diversity or were previously developed before greenbelt allocation, that wasn't its purpose and this change will only release limited land making a few landowners a bit richer when their field is deleted from the greenbelt and will exacerbate the piecemeal development approach you are against.

It would be better to have a systematic review of all urban areas, establish the extents of the communities and redraw the greenbelt to meet the needs of the people living there.
 
All I've been able to glean on Labour's intentions is that Reeves is going to 'get tough' on house builders.
 
Once again, a political statement by a party (both Tories and Labour guilty of this) that simply cannot be achieved.

1.5m homes - 200-250k per year currently - over 5 years. Not happening.

There is no will from developers to produce large scale social housing estates as there is simply not the return on them. It's all ££££ and profit.

Government/ LAs don't have the money to subsidise house building.

Where are these going to be built. Greenbelt? Brown field sites? High rises.....costing a premium.

And the small matter of......we don't have the skilled workforce to be able to physically build the units. Or manufacturing capabilities (currently) if we wanted to go down the factory produced, off site prefab route.

The lack of new social/affordable housing is a disgrace......and the problem is resolved in a shiny new pledge, not actually delivering the fooking things 🤬🤬

And here's a thought. Stop greedy landlords owning multiple properties (tax the sh*t out of them) and start to look at the number of empty properties just sitting there rotting away. Bring these up to modern standards (Retrofit works) rather simply looking at new build all of the time.

Lot of things could be done, but unfortunately it's a ££££ driven sector so unless there is a fast buck to be made .....there really isn't the will.
 
Noboby has mentioned the skills shortage either. No way will there will be enough skilled folks to build on this scale. And that in itself will drive up costs.
 
There isn't the political will to solve the housing crisis. To do so would hit the pockets of homeowners. People won't vote to make themselves poorer.
We need loads and loads of council housing. Nevermind home ownership that's gone. Renting needs to be a viable option. Before you can tackle fixing the renting market you need to take the heat out of it, which means building council housing.
"Greedy landlords" aren't the problem.
 
Developers are sat on 1 million possible properties that have planning consent we do not need to make it cheaper for them to build we need to revoke the planning consent if they do not build within 5 years
 
Building 1,5 m homes in 5 years is fanciful, equating to 300k homes per year. Where would the materials be sourced and greater still how could that quantity of tradesmen be sourced. It would take years of apprentice training to secure those numbers of construction personnel. It's the same General Election war cry all three main parties rally, NHS, homes for first time buyers and better education possibilities. All are commendable, and really needed, which subsequently, all governments fail to deliver once in power.

#UTB
 
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It’s not an impossible situation.

Plenty could be done to accelerate the provision of affordable new housing.

Plenty can be done to resolve the skills problem.

But you need to get away from just leaving it to the private sector and the market where only shareholders interests are important.

The Tory methods have been given a good chance but have failed very badly to let rich individuals make a lot of money.

It needs radical change and if Labour get elected then they need to be bold and tackle this poor quality casual workforce sector once and for all.

I’ve spent my working life in development and the construction industry, the problems are structural and this is a great opportunity to make big improvements whilst the Tory shareholders are hopefully out of power.
 
HolgateCorner said:
It’s not an impossible situation.

Plenty could be done to accelerate the provision of affordable new housing.

Plenty can be done to resolve the skills problem.

But you need to get away from just leaving it to the private sector and the market where only shareholders interests are important.

The Tory methods have been given a good chance but have failed very badly to let rich individuals make a lot of money.

It needs radical change and if Labour get elected then they need to be bold and tackle this poor quality casual workforce sector once and for all.

I’ve spent my working life in development and the construction industry, the problems are structural and this is a great opportunity to make big improvements whilst the Tory shareholders are hopefully out of power.
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Agree.

Like I said, all short term profit driven.

And this leads to social/affordable housing getting sacked off or for a 100 unit development there will be 2-3.....if you're lucky.

LAs are as much to blame, pandering to developers and not even enforcing their own planning policies (** cough cough Manchester City Council **).

Needs a radical top down approach, it's the only way. And a long term investment strategy allowing loads more social housing/rentals.
 
The skills shortage may actually be an opportunity in disguise. There is an entire generation of builders/developers who have dug their heels in against reform that is due to retire. However its an issue that will be with us for the next 20 years - can't be solved in one parliament - though Starmer was talking about a decade of renewal so is already thinking two terms minimum.
 
We seem fixated on houses in this country. Build apartments. Our town centres are full of old shops and offices that will never be re-occupied. Re-purpose them or knock them down. Young people like to live in town centres where they are close to pubs, cafes, restaurants, cinemas, etc., they don't want or need a garden. The major problem with apartment living in this country is the way in which developers either take the p!ss with maintenance charges or default on their responsibilities. New apartments in town centres solves two problems in one.
 
HolgateCorner said:
Plenty could be done to accelerate the provision of affordable new housing.
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I'm going to go against the grain on this one I think because I don't think the solution necessarily is to build affordable housing. We need to build more big houses. All mass house building schemes in the past have been on small family size houses, primarily 3 bedrooms or fewer. There are lots of people in houses with people sharing rooms that would like a bigger house but the cost jump from a 3 to a 4 bed in most areas is very steep. It makes more sense to build bigger houses so people can move up the ladder, vacating the lower rungs (which increases the supply of affordable housing for sale). There should also be a lot more done to encourage people to downsize. A large proportion of the large houses are owned by people with adult-aged children that have moved out. Those people don't need 4 bed houses but there is no real incentive to downsize.

Only 21.1% of houses have 4 or more bedrooms.

We definitely need more houses in total but building small, cheap, affordable homes probably isn't the answer.

Muttley said:
We seem fixated on houses in this country. Build apartments. Our town centres are full of old shops and offices that will never be re-occupied. Re-purpose them or knock them down. Young people like to live in town centres where they are close to pubs, cafes, restaurants, cinemas, etc., they don't want or need a garden. The major problem with apartment living in this country is the way in which developers either take the p!ss with maintenance charges or default on their responsibilities. New apartments in town centres solves two problems in one.
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I don't think people do want to live like that. They do it because it is more affordable and cheaper and they can't afford the transport on top of the rent but lockdown in particular highlighted how much people want more space, especially private outdoor space. We already have some of the smallest dwellings compared to other countries, it doesn't make sense to cram more people into smaller spaces.
 
h_m_boro said:
Once again, a political statement by a party (both Tories and Labour guilty of this) that simply cannot be achieved.

1.5m homes - 200-250k per year currently - over 5 years. Not happening.

There is no will from developers to produce large scale social housing estates as there is simply not the return on them. It's all ££££ and profit.

Government/ LAs don't have the money to subsidise house building.

Where are these going to be built. Greenbelt? Brown field sites? High rises.....costing a premium.

And the small matter of......we don't have the skilled workforce to be able to physically build the units. Or manufacturing capabilities (currently) if we wanted to go down the factory produced, off site prefab route.

The lack of new social/affordable housing is a disgrace......and the problem is resolved in a shiny new pledge, not actually delivering the fooking things 🤬🤬

And here's a thought. Stop greedy landlords owning multiple properties (tax the sh*t out of them) and start to look at the number of empty properties just sitting there rotting away. Bring these up to modern standards (Retrofit works) rather simply looking at new build all of the time.

Lot of things could be done, but unfortunately it's a ££££ driven sector so unless there is a fast buck to be made .....there really isn't the will.
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Rubbish. We have more social housing than any country in Europe bar Austria. The problem is the lack of supply of market rate homes.
 
Nano said:
I don't think people do want to live like that. They do it because it is more affordable
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Of course. I would dearly love to live in a multi-bedroomed mansion in acres of lovely countryside. And as much as I'm a Socialist I recognise that we can't all have everything that we want. The "Lockdown" thing is likely to be a once in a lifetime experience. Pandemics about once a century but if we got one next year I think the response would be more nuanced in light of the experience of 2020. The old solution of terraces housing is another way to go, with perhaps houses facing into green spaces rather than onto a road? If we are going to house everyone that needs a house we need flexible thinking and a variety of solutions, not just more Ingleby Barwicks.
 
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