Prime Minister Boris Johnson has given a ringing endorsement to home ownership as a central part of the government’s levelling up agenda.
Giving his keynote speech at the Conservative Party conference, he said housing was part of a £640 billion infrastructure investment programme.
“There is no happiness like taking a set of keys and knowing the place is yours, and that you can paint the front door whatever colour you like” he said, having described it as a “scandal” that home ownership had been dropping in recent years.
The part of Johnson’s speech dedicated to homes was short on detail but he urged delegates to the conference in Manchester to look at Google Maps to see the amount of Britain that was not built upon.
However, he insisted more homes would not be constructed on Greenfield sites; instead he said there was a massive amount of brownfield potential where new homes could be located.
Johnson made no reference to the forthcoming White Paper on the private rental sector, but made it clear that the Tories’ priority was ownership and not renting. He said home ownership meant people were happier, worked harder and were more productive.
“Homes are the way we can improve our productivity” he told delegates.
"We will enable more and more young people to share the dream of home ownership" he said, adding that the left wing "privately share" that dream "but publicly disparage it”.
During the housing section of his speech, Johnson said his government would carry out programmes of tree-planting and re-wilding.
"Otters are returning to rivers from which they have been absent for decades, beavers that have not been seen on some rivers since Tudor times are now back. Build back beaver" Johnson said.
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Lots and lots of hot air, perhaps Mr Johnson could focus on doing the right things as opposed to just talking and waffling on. By keeping his mouth shut he may get us closer to his pipe dream of net zero emissions!
Lots of B*****t
not sure I need to know about Bojo's Beaver fascination.....
(sorry, its been a long tough day already)
Boris lives on Fantasy Island in a bad way. Here are some real (non-beaver facts) the government under Disco Diva Gove the great leveller is committed to building 300,000 new properties a year.
According to NHBC which provides for 80% of the certification for new builds, they issue about 140,000 a year, which means in total 175,000 new homes are being built. And this has been a constant rate for year with a 2% to 4% uptick annually. So with growing population, and 42% of people living in a household of one, there is not enough housing, and no way by 2025, the government target date, will everyone will be living in their own home.
In fact by 2025 there will be an undersupply of close to 400,000 new homes, but by then we will be at election time, so maybe the beaver talk will be replaced by other rhetoric. And it is 50/50 if there will be an 18th Housing/Leveller secretary in post.
And unless the minimum wage hits £30 an hour and Boris lends every first time buyer a £25k deposit, this is nothing but a pipedream. It doesn't add up on many levels, but basic affordability (with interest rates on their way up) is the most glaringly obvious one.
The government have no actual control over the planning process, your Local authority does together with Parish councils in the form of the Neighbourhood plan.
The hoops and daft regulation that has to be dealt with seriously hinders development.
Boris cannot change a jot even if he wants to, planning isn’t down to him.
The bureaucratic planning process pays too many people's inflated wages to be simplified. Not that I'm a cynic of course....
And on planning with the usual 18 month to two year lag, if there are to be 300,000 new builds in 2025, the planning needs to be going in pretty quickly. Unfortunately, or fortunately Gove has decided to sit on the previous secretary's plans until he has time to wave them on or dream up plan B. But yes Andrew what is agreed at government level, when it hits LA's everything becomes very different.
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