We need to urgently build quality homes that people are proud to live in
3 min read
We have an urgent responsibility to ensure the next generation has the opportunity to meet their aspirations. That means continuing to build more, to build better, and to build faster, says Lord Bourne.
This Government’s ambition is to build a Britain fit for the future. A Britain in which everyone working hard, no matter where they are across the country, is able to realise their aspirations.
Today in Parliament I will introduce a debate on home building, where I will say that nothing is more fundamental to the aspirations of us all than having a decent, affordable, secure home.
For decades, Governments of all stripes have built too few homes. This means the typical home in England is now around eight times average earnings, leaving some families and young people feeling that their chance to build a better life is slipping out of reach.
We are determined to turn this around, setting ourselves a challenge as a Government to deliver more, better and faster home construction.
Firstly, we need more homes if the next generation is to realise the dream of home ownership.
We’re making meaningful progress, with the latest figures showing us delivering 222,000 new homes in 2017-18 – more than in all but one of the last 31 years. This is making a real difference, contributing to the number of first-time buyers last year rising to more than 370,000 – this is a twelve-year annual high.
But we are determined to go further, and have set ourselves the big, bold ambition of delivering 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s.
This is a major ambition backed by serious support, including committing £44 billion of funding and guarantees over five years to support more homes, reforming the planning system to free up more land and opportunities to build, and paving the way for a new generation of council housing by removing the cap on how much councils can borrow to build.
Secondly, we need not only more homes, but better homes.
We are bringing forward legislation to require developers to belong to a New Homes Ombudsman, which will protect homebuyers and champion quality of build, and we will also look to accelerate its development by exploring the option to introduce it in shadow form before its formal launch. We have also strengthened the importance of design quality in our national planning policy framework, ensuring new homes are rooted in what their communities want and need.
Finally, we will meet the urgent need for housing by building faster and reducing planning delays.
We’ll be publishing an Accelerated Planning green paper later this year, looking at how best to speed up the planning process from beginning to end.
But underpinning all three is a focus on harnessing innovations that hold the promise of transforming the construction sector.
This includes backing more diverse builders and cutting-edge construction methods through our £4.5 billion Home Building Fund, investing £170 million from the Construction Sector Deal to spread innovations such new digital technologies and production systems across the sector, and launching the Accelerated Construction Programme to identify surplus public sector land to deliver innovative housing projects at pace.
And, earlier this year, we announced an agreed definition and categorisation for all Modern Methods of Construction. A unified quality assurance scheme, assessing these technologies, will soon be launched – an important step in ensuring that quality remains at the forefront.
Taken together, this builds the foundation for the homes we need – quality homes that people are proud to live in, delivered quickly.
We have an urgent responsibility to ensure the next generation has the opportunity to meet their aspirations. That means continuing to build more, to build better, and to build faster.
Lord Bourne is Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Minister for Faith and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Wales
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