Tories' homes re-announcement - John Healey responds

John Healey MP, Labour’s Shadow Housing Secretary, commenting on the Conservatives’ re-announcement of homes for first-time buyers, said:

“This is yet another empty promise from the Conservatives, after 10 years of failure on housing.

“We’ve heard this all before. Conservative Ministers previously pledged to build 200,000 cut-price homes for first-time buyers, but the National Audit Office has confirmed they haven’t built a single one, despite wasting almost five years and spending millions of pounds.

“Unlike Labour, the Tories have no plan to fix the housing crisis.”

Ends

Notes to Editors

• The Conservatives are re-announcing a proposal to build new discount homes for first-time buyers.

• The Conservatives propose to apply a 30% discount to the price of a newly built home. But newly built homes are on average significantly more expensive than existing homes, meaning that first-time buyers may already be able to get the same discount being proposed simply by buying an existing rather than newly built dwelling. The average new build price in England is £313,823, 27% more expensive than the average price of an existing home, at £246,855. See Land Registry table, ‘Average price by property status’: https://landregistry.data.gov.uk/app/ukhpi/browse?from=2019-01-01&location=http%3A%2F%2Flandregistry.data.gov.uk%2Fid%2Fregion%2Fengland&to=2019-12-01. 

• The number of home-owning households aged under 45 has fallen by 800,000 since 2010: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/860078/2018-19_EHS_Headline_Report_Section_1_Households_Annex_Tables.xlsx.  

• The National Audit Office report ‘Investigation into Starter Homes’ released in November 2019, found that, despite the Conservatives’ promise to build 200,000 starter homes for first-time buyers in 2015, not a single starter home had been built. Despite this, almost £174 million has been spent on the starter homes programme. https://www.nao.org.uk/report/investigation-into-starter-homes/

• Labour has previously announced plans for homes for first-time buyers at up to half the price of market homes, with the discount linked to local incomes: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7722543/Property-developers-FORCED-sell-half-price-new-homes-local-time-buyers.html.