Today’s Queen’s Speech is expected to include a new planning bill aimed at increasing home ownership across the north and the Midlands.
The move is said to be part of a bid by the Tory party to strengthen their position in traditional Labour heartlands following last week’s election success.
The Conservatives are said to believe that successes in the general election and the recent local elections were in part attributable to the number of people who owned their own home.
Labour received a drubbing at the polls in some parts of the country, losing control of a string of councils and suffering defeat at the hands of the Conservatives in the Hartlepool by-election.
The new planning laws will simplify the process and make it harder for existing residents to block new housing schemes when an individual application is submitted.
The reforms to be announced today will ditch the second-tier of objection to reduce the NIMBY influence of local residents.
Other changes are expected to include a ‘use it or lose it’ deadline for developers accused of land banking, while a new first-time buying scheme is also to be trialled in Bolsover, Derbyshire, that will offer discounts of 30% for buyers.
Boris Johnson aims to revive Thatcher’s ‘property owning democracy’ dream
Comments (4)
The Tories need to mug people into buying so that there will be asset value to rob for care home fees.
So they persuade people to put all their money and effort into buying a home and then decades later there will hopefully sufficient asset value to be robbed by councils to pay for those very expensive care home fees.
The Govt simply cannot afford to pay for feckless tenants who have no traceable assets.
Shrewd tenants will ensure any assets they have are kept in cash and hidden away from prying eyes.
Councils and HMRC can’t detect cash.
Feckless tenants will ensure the State pays for their care home fees whereas mug homeowners will be robbed of all their asset value.
“Use it or lose it” is the best thing to come out of these proposals. If the builders actually built on what they have obtained p p to develop, then the demand for new sites would reduce dramatically. But will the Tories actually put their money where their mouths are?
Whilst I generally support the idea of building more new homes, what I really want to see is a stop to the exploitation of the help to buy scheme by new homes developers.
There is not a month goes by where we are not telling someone that on the second hand market their property is worth £20-30,000 less than they paid for it.
How this situation doesn’t receive more attention is frankly astonishing.
Squash the NIMBYs. That’s exactly what’s needed and build, build build!
New builds were down by 17% last year to less than 150,000 and a building frenzy will create jobs and homes.