Tim Farron condemned the Conservative government’s Housing and Planning Bill yesterday for an all-out assault on social and affordable housing, at a time when they are most needed.
Access to housing is fundamental to our liberties, our opportunities, and our hopes for the future; that applies to every person here. We therefore need a positive vision for housing that meets existing needs and gives security to the most vulnerable. We need more homes of all tenures—affordable homes that must live up to their name and be genuinely affordable. We need an ambitious plan that increases home-building to 300,000 properties a year, that is forward-thinking, and that sets us up for the low-carbon future that is essential for the sustainability of our planet.
The Liberal Democrat vision is based on understanding this emergency and having ambitions to solve it. It is a vision of 10 new garden cities strategically placed where new communities can grow and thrive; of empowering councils to manage their housing stock effectively, enabling them to borrow what they can and build what they need; of stimulating private sector investment in housing through the creation of a housing investment bank; of supporting and sustaining rural communities to ensure that young families can afford to continue living in the place they call home; of strengthening local communities by bringing empty homes back into use; and of tackling the excessive second home ownership that damages communities in rural areas such as the west country and Cumbria.
The principle, accepted by the coalition, that houses sold under Right-To-Buy should be replaced, has been abandoned. Instead there is an exclusive focus on home-ownership, rather than on the mix of tenures that would meet the needs of more of us including the more needy.
Even increasing home ownership through more “unaffordable” housebuilding for sale would reduce overall pressure if done on large enough a scale, but there is no sense here of coming anywhere near the 300,000 homes a year that are needed.
Where is the recognition of the extent to which insecurity of housing and the effect of that on children’s education is stifling opportunity in this country? Where is the recognition that the barriers to moving home to find work are preventing the labour market from functioning efficiently: restricting opportunity and limiting the economic recovery.
Instead we see from this government the results of crude political calculations around home ownership and voting intention.
Tim’s full speech against the bill can be read here.
* Joe Otten was the candidate for Sheffield Heeley in June 2017 and Doncaster North in December 2019 and is a councillor in Sheffield.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Could Hitler have won?
Say hello to the Act that successfully set rules 1,050 years into the future - Calendar (New Style) Act 1750
Indecision costing the taxpayers millions
1963: London's summer of the Hoverbus
theakes
Tristan Ward
Abrial Jerram
8 Comments
Very disappointing turn out of Lib Dems again last night. Where are the Lib Dem MP’s for these important debates ? Other Parties were mocking their lack of attendance during the debate. New Tory for Kingston made a strong speech attacking the previous Lib Dem administration for building very few affordable homes in the Borough.
What is the Lib Dem plan to build 300,000 then? Sounds more like the sort of worthless rhetoric we’ve been hearing for 20 years?
In my view, such levels of construction are wholly unrealistic anyway. Only a direct government building programme of 150,000 unit per years would achieve this target. It’s simply not gonna happen.
There’s very little chance we’ll be able to keep up with our massive (immigration driven) population growth. We need a more pragmatic approach – encourage generational living, encourage house sharing into adulthood, encourage the conversion of 2-3 bed properties into HMOs, legalise ‘bed-in-sheds’ and apply building regs to them for safety.
PT
“Sounds more like the sort of worthless rhetoric we’ve been hearing for 20 years?”
Unless there is a willing ness to cut back the green belt.
“encourage generational living”
That often is very hard to do given the location people choose to live in and also the suitability of property for that use.
“encourage house sharing into adulthood”
Actually fairly common among the young, doesn’t work for those with children, and not uncommon with the older singles (I certainly know a few with lodgers).
“encourage the conversion of 2-3 bed properties into HMOs”
2 bed houses would never need to be HMOs as two unrelated people are free to live in one without the property requiring a licence. Many 3 bed places don’t require HMO licences as there is often a couple and a flat mate/two couples (when large enough).
To suggest that increasing regulation (and costs) on smaller properties is a solution to anything would be a very odd solution to a high cost/shortage problem.
Scrapping Stamp duty to encourage moving (giving better use of the housing stock) and implementing an LVT would be much better polices.
Tory minister Greg Clark, MP for Tunbridge Wells, got into a dispute with a Labour MP about the number of houses and whether they are replaced. That is only part of the issue. Other numbers matter, such as family size and property value.
The policy he is trying to defend is a spatch-cock. It may be that the Chancellor is to blame, but trying to balance the sale of high value houses with the enforced sale of housing association homes is not primarily about housing need and only produces matching financial outcomes occasionally and accidentally.
The government expects local councils to sell off their ‘best’ council houses to help to finance the introduction of ‘Right to Buy’ for Housing Association properties. What will happen in places like Lincolnshire where at least two of the seven District Councils have already transferred their housing stock to Housing Associations?
Phil Thomas
Your comment on the failure of our few Lib Dem MPs not turning up to support Tim in important debates is of concern.
Tim had better get a grip on them. If they carry on like this the opposition will have a field day in 2020. If they cannot be bothered to turn up what are the rest of us activist wasting our time doing
Ald David…………….The only MP in the Chamber is Brake. Never see any of the others there. Clegg seems to have given up.
In Bath, it was one of your MPs, that was against housing as with your councillors.
The amount of student housing being built is insulting, to those who are in dire need of homes.
A casino, more hotels, lots of student housing in the centre of the city. Even the former police station the university has bought. The compass grows,
A shocking state of affairs.