Let’s build Britain upwards, says PM

May unveils push for new houses and higher homes

THERESA May will today launch a major push to restore the dream of home ownership in Britain.

The Prime Minister will say she wants to encourage not only new houses but also more storeys on existing buildings.

She will announce plans to relax planning rules so two more floors can be added to many properties, and she will condemn the ‘perverse incentive’ which links bonus payments for developers to profits and share price – not the number of homes built.

She will also insist communities shouldn’t have to put up with ‘row after row of identikit red tiled boxes’ on the edge of towns and villages. New developments will have to include ‘traditional streets and squares, and buildings that better suit their surroundings’.

Finally, builders who sit on land and wait for its value to rise could be punished by having future planning applications refused. Mrs May will also:

Threaten to strip planning powers from councils which fail to meet house building targets and hand them to officials;

Announce plans to build up to five garden towns in the corridor between Oxford and Cambridge;

Pledge to maintain the green belt and protect ancient woodlands and historic coastlines;

Argue that the security of home ownership also gives people ‘a stake in your community and its future’.

More than 217,000 new homes were built last year, the second highest rate since 1992.

Addressing a planning conference in London, Mrs May will warn the lack of supply is pushing up prices for buyers and renters – and becoming a barrier to social mobility.

‘In much of the country, housing is so unaffordable that millions of people who would reasonably expect to buy their own home are unable to do so. The result is a vicious circle from which most people can only escape with help from the Bank of Mum and Dad.

‘If you’re not lucky enough to have such support, the door to home ownership is all too often locked and barred.’

Housing secretary Sajid Javid confirmed yesterday rules would be relaxed for homeowners who wanted to add storeys to their houses.

Mr Javid said ‘the density of London is less than half that of Paris. We don’t want London to end up like Hong Kong’.

But he called for more ‘ mansion blocks, the kind you might see in Kensington and Chelsea’.

‘It will be quite surprising how easy we want to make it for people who want to build upwards,’ he said.

Rounding on builders who ‘bank’ land and wait for its price to rise to maximise profits, Mrs May will urge them to ‘step up’.

Bonus payments to big developers are based not on how many homes they build but profits or share price, she will say.

‘In a market where lower supply equals higher prices, that creates a perverse incentive, one that does not encourage them to build the homes we need.’

In future, ministers could ‘allow councils to take a developer’s previous rate of build-out into account when deciding whether to grant planning permission’, Mrs May will say.

‘I want to see planning permissions going to people who are actually going to build houses, not just sit on land and watch its value rise. I expect developers to do their duty to Britain and build the homes our country needs.’

Earlier this year the Mail revealed how one of Britain’s biggest builders is in line to collect a bonus of £131million on the back of soaring profits. Jeff Fairburn, chief executive of Persimmon, was nicknamed ‘Mr £100million’ after details emerged. He subsequently said he would give a ‘substantial’ part of the bonus to charity.

Mrs May will insist the ‘answer to our housing crisis does not lie in tearing up the green belt’.

Maintaining existing protections will mean councils ‘can only amend green belt boundaries if they can prove they have fully explored every other reasonable option’.

Labour’s housing spokesman John Healey said: ‘The Prime Minister should be embarrassed to be fronting up these feeble measures first announced a year ago. Since 2010, home-ownership has fallen to a 30-year low, rough sleeping has more than doubled, and deep cuts to housing investment have led to the lowest number of new social rented homes built since records began.’

‘The result is a vicious circle’