My plan to revive the dream of home ownership

To get young people on the property ladder, we need a radical agenda that tackles vested interests

Areport by the think tank Onward last week highlighted the challenge for Conservatives at the next election. The average age when a voter is likely to vote Tory has risen from 34, before the last election, to 51. The good news is that there are three million voters under 35 who aren’t sold on Jeremy Corbyn’s snakeoil socialism. But they need to see an aspirational Conservative vision for the future – and that starts with housing.

For many young people the dream of owning a home is a mirage. After the Second World War, the average home cost twice the average salary. When I bought my first flat with a friend, in 1997, the average home cost four times average earnings. That was a stretch. Today, the average home costs eight times average earnings. Saving for a deposit is beyond reach for many.

Successive governments haven’t been radical enough in taking on the vested interests to get enough homes built to keep them affordable. Having served as housing minister, I saw that challenge first-hand – and understand the radical reforms a pioneering Tory government must deliver, to give working Britain a fairer deal.

First, we must make better use of technology. The housing market is monopolised by big developers with staff to scour the land registry for plum sites. We should digitise land registry records, developing an app for easy reference, to empower smaller developers to find sites for community development. That would break the stranglehold of big developers, deliver more homes and cut prices for buyers.

Likewise, new homes can now be largely assembled in factories, reducing inconvenience to, and opposition from, residents. Coupled with planning reform, to make it easier to build on existing residential sites, new modular homes can be built cheaper and to better design in the places where young people want to live – close to jobs and transport links.

Next, government must stop hoarding land – such as obsolete barracks, train depots and car parks – which represents lousy value for taxpayers’ money. Homes England should be empowered to identify and mandate governmentowned sites for new homes, with half allocated for key public sector workers and half for shared ownership and affordable housing.

Planning reform should give local communities greater choice over the type of new homes, by requiring their design to be put out to tender by developers once outline planning permission is granted – and letting communities choose their preferred plan. By turning local resistance into community choice, we can build more of the right homes in the right places.

Developers who secure sites should face sanctions if they don’t build the affordable homes, provide the infrastructure or build at the rate promised. Planning permissions should be treated like contracts for delivery, with councils given the power to sell sites to smaller developers or community groups when a developer persistently fails to keep its word.

And local authorities should be given more flexibility to avoid the “free for all”, where they fail to meet housing targets. Councils in urban and suburban areas should be able to show that they have exhausted viable sites within a mile of local train stations – where demand for homes for young working Britons is high – as a safeguard to prevent the presumption in favour of sustainable development from kicking in.

As well as building more homes, they must be more affordable. We should scrap stamp duty on all homes under £500,000 – saving first-time buyers up to £10,000 and encouraging more people to buy and downsize. The Help to Buy equity loan scheme should be replaced with a new sharedownership scheme. That subsidy could deliver hundreds of thousands of shared-ownership homes, which is fairer and avoids inflating prices.

For private renters, we should encourage landlords to sell to sitting tenants by allowing a rebate on the capital gains tax on the sale, up to £35,000. Tenants could receive two thirds to put towards a 10 per cent deposit to buy the property, with the landlord receiving a third. Finally, we must keep our promise to extend the right to buy to housing association tenants – while replenishing the stock of subsidised housing, by allowing councils to keep more of their receipts from right to buy.

As Conservatives, we have sold the next generation on the dream of the UK as a property-owning democracy. We must keep that promise, by taking on vested interests with a radical agenda that will deliver home ownership for young working Britons.