You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Labour pledges to reform affordable rent to match 30% of incomes
The Labour Party is vowing to reform affordable rents to match around 30% of average household incomes and force developers to build more “truly affordable homes”.
In a speech to the party’s annual conference on Sunday, shadow housing secretary Lucy Powell is expected to outline a series of pledges to tackle the housing crisis if her party is elected.
Labour would re-establish the link between “genuinely affordable housing and average earnings” to help those “locked out of the system”, she is expected to say.
As part of this, if elected, Labour would look to redefine affordable rent as around 30% of household income. Affordable rent is currently defined as approximately 80% of local market rents.
It is understood that Labour thinks that cutting the cost of affordable rents means that people will be able to save more if they want to buy a property. The policy has echoes of Jeremy Corbyn’s plans in Labour’s 2019 manifesto to link affordable rents to local incomes.
READ MORE
Ms Powell will also seek to redefine Labour as the party of homeownership.
She said: “The country is facing a housing crisis with the link between hard work and getting on the housing ladder broken for many.
“Insecure tenancies and expensive rents make it hard for people who play by the rules to get on in life. The challenges of affordability, an ageing population, building safety and the climate emergency all mean we need a bold new approach.”
Her speech will come just over a week after it emerged that new housing secretary Michael Gove has paused the government’s controversial planning reforms. Labour has suggested that this means there is now a lack of government strategy to meet ministers’ aims to be building 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s.
Keir Starmer’s party is also pledging to give local authorities and communities new powers to develop land for affordable housing. It is also vowing to close loopholes that it said currently allow developers to avoid building more affordable housing.
Asked by Inside Housing for more details on the ambition to force developers to build more affordable homes, a spokesperson for Labour said it would make the contributions system “stronger, clearer and more transparent” to “mean there is less horse-trading, communities know what they can expect from new developments, and developers can’t move the goalposts after a deal has been done”.
Ms Powell’s bid to define Labour as the party of homeownership will be an effort to steal the claim from the Conservatives.
“Labour is the party of homeownership, the Tories are the party of speculators and developers,” she said. “They treat housing as a commodity, not the bedrock of stable lives and life chances.”
As part of this strategy, she will reportedly outline plans to give first-time buyers the exclusive right to buy new build homes for six months.
Labour’s 2019 manifesto, under Jeremy Corbyn, said that first-time buyers would be given “first dibs” on new homes built in their area.
Labour is also promising to put an end to what it calls the “outrageous practice of foreign buyers purchasing swathes of new housing developments off-plan, before local people can even see them”.
Ms Powell will reportedly say that Labour will limit the number of units in a development that can be bought by overseas buyers to 50%.
In its 2019 manifesto, Labour had introducing a levy on foreign companies that buy housing.
The party will also reportedly look to reform compulsory purchase orders to “revitalise” town centres and high streets and allow vacant shops to be brought back into use, potentially as affordable housing.
The Labour Party conference starts tomorrow and runs until Wednesday 29 September.
