UK government set to reform housing market
So we have a preview of this week’s Housing White Paper and it looks as of the government has actually been listening. If the hints given by Housing and Planning Minister Gavin Barwell at the weekend are anything to go by, then big change is indeed on the way.
When Theresa May became Prime Minister commentators said that her government would take a different approach and since then it has been claimed that she never liked the old school Conservatism that predecessor David Cameron epitomised.
She got rid of the Old Etonians and promised to help the JAMS, those who are just about managing. Now, the crucially important Housing White Paper appears to be ready to change the age old Conservative Party idea that everyone should own a home.
Aside from the pretty important news that incentives to be offered to older home owners to downsize, it looks as if there will be plenty of change that will encourage people to think that renting a home is okay, that young people should not feed ashamed if they cannot afford to buy and that the residential lettings sector should be more family friendly.
It will indeed be good news if longer tenancies are introduced and become the norm, as Barwell has hinted. We all know that moving home is stressful and that is true whether you are an owner or a tenant. Longer tenancies will give families more security.
It will also be good news
if the quality of homes for rent are improved by a crackdown on substandard properties. This fits in with the idea of the government supporting Build-to-Rent and there is likely to be a section about this in the White Paper too.
What will be crucial is government plans to change the planning system. Quite frankly, councils have been allowed for too long to ride roughshod over the system. We all know they take far too long, impose far too many regulations and do not think outside of the box. In a story recently, Property Wire highlighted how developers have to agree the tinist of details before they can even start building, including signs for a children’s playground on a new housing development, the kind of things that can be worked on while building gets underway.
The government knows, as we all do, that more homes need to be built and at least it seems for once, to be genuinely trying to do something. As always, the devil will be in the detail and that might not be in the White Paper, but come out in the months ahead.
For example, it is crucial that the paper sets out how incentives for downsizing will work, how local authority planning will be speeded up and revolutionised to fit the new housing outlook and how the quality of rented homes will be improved.
I hope that this government is not all talk and no action. It is easy to be bold on paper, to set out what you want to do in detail, but actually doing it is a different matter. We can’t expect change overnight, but I really hope that tardy local authorities are taken to task and we can look forward to a new style of planning in the UK that works for everyone from home owners and tenants, to house builders and developers and give people the kind of homes they really want.