Queen's Speech December 2019 - Housing

Housing

“My government will take steps to support home ownership, including by making homes available at a discount for local first-time buyers.”

• ●  The Government will support people to realise the dream of homeownership. One of the biggest divides in our country is between those who can afford their own home and those who cannot.

• ●  The Government will shortly launch a consultation on First Homes. This will provide homes for local people and key workers at a discount of at least 30 per cent - saving them tens of thousands of pounds.

• ●  The discount on First Homes will be secured through a covenant. This means these homes will remain discounted in perpetuity, supporting people now and in the future who aspire to own a home of their own.

• ●  The Government will also renew the Affordable Homes Programme, building hundreds of thousands of new homes for a range of people in different places. This will help us prevent people from falling into homelessness while also supporting further people into homeownership.

• ●  We will introduce a new, reformed Shared Ownership model, making buying a share of a home fairer and more transparent. This new model will be simpler to understand and better able shared owners to buy more of their property and eventually reach full ownership.

• ●  To deliver on the homes this country needs, the Government is committed to building at least a million more homes over this Parliament. In the coming months we will set out further steps to achieve this, including an ambitious Planning White Paper and funding for critical infrastructure.

• ●  The Planning White Paper will make the planning process clearer, more accessible and more certain for all users, including homeowners and small businesses. It will also address resourcing and performance in Planning Departments.

• ●  The new £10bn Single Housing Infrastructure fund will provide the roads, schools and GP surgeries needed to support new homes. Alongside First Homes, this will ensure local people truly benefit from house building in their area and build support for new developments

• ●  To help those who rent, the Government will build a rental system that is fit for the modern day – supporting landlords to provide high quality homes while

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protecting tenants. The Government’s Better Deal for Renters will fulfil our manifesto commitments to abolish ‘no fault’ evictions and to introduce lifetime deposits, alongside further reforms to strengthen the sector for years to come.

• ●  The Government is taking forward a comprehensive programme of reform to end unfair practices in the leasehold market. This includes working with the Law Commission to make buying a freehold or extending a lease easier, quicker and more cost effective – and to reinvigorate commonhold and Right to Manage.

• ●  The Government will ensure that if a new home can be sold as freehold, then it will be. We will get rid of unnecessary ground rents on new leases and give new rights to homeowners to challenge unfair charges. The Government will also close legal loopholes to prevent unfair evictions and make it faster and cheaper to sell a leasehold home.

• ●  For those in the social rented sector, we will bring forward a Social Housing White Paper which will set out further measures to empower tenants and support the continued supply of social homes. This will include measures to provide greater redress, better regulation and improve the quality of social housing.

• ●  This Government has committed to end rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament. The Government will continue to invest in key rough sleeping interventions, building on the progress that we made last year in reducing rough sleeping numbers. The Government will also continue to support those at risk of homelessness and rough sleeping through the continued enforcement of the Homelessness Reduction Act.

  Key facts

Home Ownership ●

• ●  First Homes are a new initiative which will deliver homes below market prices prioritised for local first-time buyers. This means that these homes will continue to benefit the local community every time they are resold. We will consider both planning changes and legislation in order to deliver this.

• ●  The discounts on these homes will be funded by developers. These developer contributions are an established mechanism for ensuring that new developments deliver benefits for local communities.

In 2018 the number of first-time buyers reached nearly 360,000 - an eleven

year annual high and an increase of 84 per cent since 2010.

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Housing Supply/Affordable Homes

• ●  Annual net additions in England reached over 241,000 in 2018-19, the highest in over 30 years.

• ●  Since 2010, we have delivered over 464,500 new affordable homes, including over 331,800 affordable homes for rent.

• ●  Through the Housing Infrastructure Fund, the Government has already allocated £3.07 billion to unlock over 280,000 homes.

  Leasehold

● The proportion of new build houses in England and Wales sold as leasehold rose from 7 per cent in 1995 to 15 per cent in 2016, and has subsequently fallen to 2 per cent in Q2 2019.

Private Rented Sector

• ●  There are currently 4.5m households in the private rented sector making it the second largest tenure (19 per cent of households).

• ●  The quality of rented housing has improved over the past decade – the number of private rented homes failing to meet the Decent Homes Standard is down 15 per cent since 2010.

  Homelessness and rough sleeping

• ●  The total number of people counted or estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night was 4,677 in 2018. This represents a 2 per cent reduction on the 2017 single night snapshot but an increase of 165 per cent since 2010.

• ●  As of June 2019, there were 86,130 households in temporary accommodation, including 61,800 families with 127,370 children.

• ●  Local authorities accepted homeless applications from 173,870 single households last year.