{"id":21545,"date":"2018-09-26T15:00:48","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T14:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.buyassociation.co.uk\/?p=21545"},"modified":"2018-09-26T15:00:48","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T14:00:48","slug":"help-to-build-plan-revealed-at-labour-party-conference-to-solve-housing-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/news\/help-to-build-plan-revealed-at-labour-party-conference-to-solve-housing-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Help to Build plan revealed at Labour party conference to solve housing crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Conservative councillor turned online estate agency boss at Emoov, Russell Quirk, has revealed his new plan to create the UK’s first publicly owned housebuilder.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Quirk led a panel chaired by Labour group Progress\u2019s deputy director, Stephanie Lloyd, at the Labour party conference, to discuss Britain\u2019s housing crisis.<\/p>\n

The Emoov CEO claimed that the housing crisis was causing hostility from people across the country towards the two main political parties. He highlighted that housing had become prohibitively expensive<\/a>, social and affordable housing had diminished and the government\u2019s annual housing target<\/a> of 300,000 new homes was not on track.<\/p>\n

Other problems, cited by Quirk were a political resistance to utilising the less scenic areas of green belt<\/a> land and an overly lengthy planning process.<\/p>\n

What does the solution involve?<\/h4>\n

The debate entitled \u201cHome is where the heart is: can we solve Britain\u2019s housing crisis\u201d was discussed by a panel which included shadow housing secretary John Healey, Guardian<\/em> columnist Dawn Foster and cabinet member for housing at Ealing Borough Council, Peter Mason.<\/p>\n

Quirk\u2019s solution is to create a government-owned building company, UK Housing plc, that would roll out a Help to Build scheme countrywide. The company would be run as a private enterprise with the government and taxpayer as its shareholders.<\/p>\n

During the debate, Quirk highlighted the need to overcome the problem of major housebuilders<\/a> having a monopoly on land, suggesting that a Formal Asset Register already in existence could be transformed into a database.<\/p>\n

The new database would allow sites to be identified, and the body itself could determine over a five-year scheme the housing stock<\/a> required in each area by type, tenure and geography.<\/p>\n

Not replacing big housebuilders<\/h4>\n

The current Formal Asset Register records land assets publicly owned at a local and national level. Transforming this into a live database would enable local authorities and central government to invest in and commit to using those assets to build new homes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Quirk said: “I know that this process is viable, as during my time as the chairman of Brentwood Council\u2019s Asset Committee I implemented it successfully on a local level. I identified the land, incepted development plans, gained the planning permission<\/a> and tendered to sell.<\/p>\n

“We had control of how many of the properties were affordable and I planned to retain some of the dwellings under council control for the rental sector for continued revenue \u2013 although the majority of my other less forward-thinking colleagues at the time voted against it.<\/p>\n

“\u2018Help to Build\u2019 doesn\u2019t replace the big housebuilders \u2013 they are free to peddle their wares as they see fit and do so currently.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“However, we cannot allow the issue of supply to rest solely with them and their engineered restriction of housing stock<\/a>. We have the land, the resource and a model that facilitates the delivery while ensuring our councils don\u2019t lose out financially. We have the solution \u2013 we just need to implement it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Conservative councillor turned online estate agency boss at Emoov, Russell Quirk, has revealed his new plan to create the UK’s first publicly owned housebuilder. Quirk led a panel chaired by Labour group Progress\u2019s deputy director, Stephanie Lloyd, at the Labour party conference, to discuss Britain\u2019s housing crisis. The Emoov CEO claimed that the housing… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":6287,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[72,341],"class_list":["post-21545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uk-housing-market","tag-housebuilding","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}