Housing and Planning

Spokesperson: Christopher Ecclestone (andoverLiberals@gmail.com)


Housing 

  • 300K new homes a year / 100K to be social homes for rent. 

  • Give local government the power to determine housing policies with greater flexibility:
    • Repeal Section 21

  • Repeal the 1961 Land Compensation Act. 

  • Allow mortgages to become inheritable. 

  • Make it law that a safe green space is built in all new estates, so children have an area to play. 

  • Implement a Finnish Housing First programme to tackle homelessness. 

  • Incorporate a Vienna Model style of Social-Housing. 

  • Tax incentives for small and medium sized house builders to encourage competition. 

  • Lease-holder reform. 

  • Cladding replacement initiative. 

Planning (Licensing) 

  • Replace the current planning system with a rules based system – along the lines of those in most continental European countries, with a presumption in favour of development. 

  • End Right-to-Buy / Help-to-Buy. 

  • Abolish the bedroom tax and introduce positive incentives for people to downsize.

  • Prevent ‘land-banking’ from taking place after the local government has granted planning permission for construction by setting an upper limit of a year before construction must begin. 

  • Allow councils to grant planning permission on land they own and retain the sale value difference. 

  • Compulsory Purchase: councils will be able to buy land from the government more cheaply than developers. 

  • Repeal the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. 

  • Devolve planning law on greenbelt designations and permitted development rights to local government. 

  • Continue to prioritise brownfield site development; however, reform the green-belt to allow construction of housing on intensive farmland and other damaged land, while protecting areas of outstanding natural beauty and sites of special scientific interest: 
    • Release 5% of Green Belt land around London all within 800m of existing railway links, for residential development. 

  • Insure that all landlords have a mandatory licence: 
    • Reviewed on an annual basis.