With the election imminent, we wanted to give you an idea of what each of the main parties’ housing policies are:
Labour
- Act on every front to bring the cost of housing down and standards up, so that everyone has a decent, affordable place to call home.
- Tackle the climate crisis and cut energy bills by introducing a tough, new zero-carbon homes standard for all new homes.
- Build one million affordable homes – most for social rent – over 10 years.
- 100,000 discounted homes for first-time buyers.
- Build at an annual rate of at least 150,000 council and social homes by the end of the Parliament.
- End the sale of new leasehold properties, abolish unfair fees and conditions, and give leaseholders the right to buy their freehold at a price they can afford.
- Improve standards, security and affordability for renters, with controls on rents and an end to "no fault" evictions.
- End rough sleeping within five years, make 8,000 homes available for those with a history of rough sleeping and introduce a £100m plan for emergency winter accommodation.
Conservative
- Introduce long-term fixed rate mortgages.
- Charge a stamp duty surcharge to non-UK residents.
- Abolish ‘no fault’ evictions (Section 21).
- Give good landlords greater rights of possession.
- Allow councils to discount homes by a third for local people who can’t otherwise afford to buy a home in their area.
- Commitment to Right to Buy for council and housing association tenants.
- Set a single standard for all housing associations by simplifying shared ownership products.
- Ban the sale of new leasehold homes.
- Build at least a million more homes over the next parliament.
- Planning system will be simplified for the public and small builders.
- Support Modern Methods of Construction.
- Tackle homelessness by expanding the Rough Sleeping Initiative and Housing First programmes, funded by stamp duty.
- Modify the planning rules so that services such as roads, schools and GP surgeries come before people move to new homes, using a £10bn Single Housing Services Fund.
Liberal Democrats
- Build 300,000 new homes a year by 2024, including 100,000 homes for social rent.
- Help young people get into rental market with government-backed tenancy deposit loans for all first-time renters under 30.
- Promote longer tenancies of 3 years+, with inflation-linked annual rent increases built in.
- £15bn over the next Parliament to retrofit insulation in 26 million homes.
- End rough sleeping within five years.
- Allow local authorities to increase council tax by up to 500% where homes are being bought as second homes.
- All new homes to be built to zero carbon standard by 2021, rising to Passivhaus standard by 2025.
- Assist councils in delivering housing energy efficiency improvements to cut costs.
- Test a new subsidised Energy-Saving Homes scheme, ranking stamp duty by the energy rating of a property and reducing VAT on home insulation.
