Yesterday morning, communities secretary Sajid Javid stood in the House of Commons to finally unveil the Government’s housing white paper. Here are its ten biggest statements.
It might be worthwhile pointing out that, overall, Javid’s speech was rather vague. He promised the Government would speed up construction, encourage institutional investment in the rental sector and protect the green belt.
Generation Rent, the Government may be ready to help you out!
When, however, it came to the details regarding how all these changes will be achieved, very little information was made public.
Here are 10 things we picked up on during Sajid Javid’s speech:
- Institutional investment in the Private Rented Sector (PRS) will be encouraged
- The Government will release more land, and it will do so quickly with increased measures of transparency around land banking (scheme that involves buying large blocks of land with a view to sell on at a profit when after approval for development)
- The green belt will be safe and under no danger to be ripped up
- New sites will be identified for development which are not only empty land but are actually usable and practical sites
- Every local area has to produce a realistic housing plan and review it every five years whilst local people should also have a bigger say when it comes to what their community should look like
- In order to support local authorities, Javid will be looking into compulsory purchasing powers
- The Government aims to tackle unbalanced leasehold terms
- It will become easier for small to medium sized builders to compete as the Government will start supporting off-site building
- Overall a £3bn fund will be created to help small business build more homes
- The Government aims to add another 25,000 homes to the country by 2020
