The Government faces tough fiscal choices – nevertheless spending on housing will support growth, reduce future costs to other departments (welfare, healthcare) and is essential to deliver the Government’s ambition of 1.5 million homes.
The Housing Forum published a review of the Government’s progress in its first year: Roadmap to 1.5m homes: One year in.
This sets out what the housing sector knows is needed, what has been delivered and what is still to do. We have also published the Costs of Building a House, which highlights how Government can reduce costs, freeing up more funding for infrastructure and affordable housing.
In the Autumn Statement next month, we’re calling for a package of measures to get the sector building at scale:
- Funding for the social housing sector to ensure landlords can maintain and upgrade their existing homes, alongside building new homes
- The Government must implement rent convergence to allow social landlords to increase social rents back to target rents, of at least £2 a week above the CPI+1% annual increase.
- Grant rates for affordable housing should be reformed so that they are at a rate per habitable room in order to encourage building larger family homes where needed. Additional funding would facilitate this without the loss of overall numbers.
- Financial support for the wider housing sector
- The Government should adequately and urgently resource the Building Safety Regulator to unblock the backlog in new and existing buildings
- The proposed changes to landfill tax which could add around £25,000 to the cost of building a new home on a brownfield site need rethinking.
- Changes are needed to the way that the for-profit Registered Provider sector and Build-to-Rent sectors are taxed around SDLT, VAT and Corporation Tax.
- Government should support local authority housebuilding.
- Support is needed for first time buyers, targeted at newbuild. A DIY Shared Ownership scheme for newbuild homes could be a good option here.
- Improving housing quality
- VAT should be permanently removed from retrofitting, regeneration and fire safety work undertaken by Registered Providers and the public sector.
- Additional funding must be provided to fully cover additional costs associated with meeting higher energy efficiency standards or a higher service level via the new Decent Homes Standard.
You can read the response in full here.
