Labour Bid To Seize Empty Homes And Squalid Rental Properties

Labour will discuss plans to allow councils to compulsorily purchase homes left empty for six months. Young Labour has submitted a motion to the party’s conference in Brighton that calls for the requisition of "unoccupied tower blocks in London" and cites Berlin and Vancouver as examples of where this has occurred. It goes on to state that Labour should "Requisition empty private homes by Compulsory Purchase Order...as well as the worst private rented sector properties and vacant land plots to conduct land assembly and to provide temporary accommodation."   Read more on Estate Agent Today.

https://www.estateagenttoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2019/9/labour-bid-to-seize-empty-homes-and-poor-rental-properties

Osborne: 'Building Doesn't Come Easy’

George Osborne has used his party conference speech to reaffirm the Conservative policy toward housing. He said to supporters in Manchester: “Building doesn’t come easy and especially when it comes to new homes and infrastructure that the country needs. We are going to get many more homes built for families to buy, we’re sweeping away planning rules on brownfield sites, this autumn we will direct our housing budget towards new homes for sale. We will give housing association tenants the right to buy. We’ve had enough of people who own their own home lecturing others about why they can’t own their own one too.” Read more on 24dash.

Shadow Chancellor Promises Action On Homeless Families

Labour will provide accommodation for 100,000 children in homeless families, shadow chancellor John McDonnell has pledged. Speaking at the annual Labour Party conference in Brighton, McDonnell said ongoing austerity measures are hitting families hard. He said austerity is “not just a word” for the 100,000 children in homeless families who live in bed and breakfast or temporary accommodation. On behalf of this party I give those children my solemn promise that when we return to government we will build you all a decent and secure home in which to live,” he said. Figures published last week show that, as of the end of June, 66,980 individuals or families were registered as having no home of their own - an increase of 12 per cent from the same date last year.

A total of 99,080 children were among those living in temporary accommodation.   Read more on the Children & Young People Now website.

Cable Warns Of Inequalities Caused By Housing Market Crisis

Vince Cable has warned of deepening inequality between social classes and the generations because of a fundamental crisis in the housing market fuelled by George Osborne’s Help to Buy and Right to Buy policies.  The Lib Dem business secretary said the crux of the problem was a shortage of social housing, which the government had failed to replace while offering people incentives to buy their council homes. The party’s conference in Glasgow passed a motion to give local authorities the ability to suspend Right to Buy in their areas, on the grounds that council tenants were being given huge incentives to purchase their homes without enough replacement of social housing stock. Read more on the Guardian website.

Lib Dems Vote against Scrapping Bedroom Tax

Liberal Democrat members have voted overwhelmingly against pledging to scrap the bedroom tax outright. The party’s manifesto will promise to reform the policy so it only applies to those who have turned down a suitable offer of alternative accommodation, with blanket exemptions for some disabled people.  But an amendment to scrap the benefit reduction outright for both social housing and private sector tenants was rejected by members at the manifesto debate at the party conference in Glasgow. Read more on Inside Housing.

Conservative Conference 2014: Housing Roundup

Catch up with the most important housing stories to emerge from the Conservative conference 2014 with our at-a-glance roundup.

·         100,000 discount new homes for first-time buyers

·         Working-age benefits would be frozen until 2017

·         Benefit cap to be cut to £23,000

·         Rent-to-buy fund announced

·         Housing benefit scrapped for 18- to 21-year-olds

·         Prepaid benefit cards to replace cash

Read details of all the above on the Guardian website.

Chancellor’s Welfare Cuts Won’t Solve Housing Crisis Or Ease Poverty

George Osborne’s proposed crackdown on welfare benefits might have played well to the crowd at the Conservative Party conference, but it hasn’t gone down so well among housing professionals. The Chancellor announced a further reduction in the benefit cap limiting the amount of state assistance a household can receive – from £26,000 to £23,000. He also announced a two-year freeze on benefits: Job Seekers’ Allowance, Income Support, tax credits, Housing and child benefits. The proposals have caused some concern at the CIH, which said the Chancellor’s welfare package “fails to reflect the reality of the housing crisis”. “We are not building enough homes, which means the cost of housing and therefore the housing benefit bill is going up. Millions of people have no choice but to rely on housing benefit to secure a roof over their head. The number of people in work who still have to claim housing benefit has more than doubled from around 445,000 to just over a million in the last five years,” said Grainia Long, the CIH’s chief executive. Read more on the Housing Excellence website.

Labour's Plans for Building New Homes

Speaking at the start of his party's annual conference in Manchester, Ed Miliband said that an incoming Labour government would introduce New Homes Corporations (NHCs) in an effort to boost housebuilding to 200,000 homes a year by 2020. The NHCs would work with private companies and housing associations in local authority areas already earmarked for development. Labour believes that, left unchecked, our national shortage of homes will become acute, hitting two million by 2020. Mr Miliband also pledged to tackle the problem of 'land banking' by extending local authorities' powers to withdraw planning permission from uncooperative developers. Read more on the Coalition Watch blog.

Miliband Pledges to Use Mansion Tax to Tackle Crisis in NHS

Labour would use the proceeds of a mansion tax on homes worth more than £2m to head off a funding crisis in the NHS. In his speech to the Labour conference in Manchester, Mr Miliband promised to save the NHS amid forecasts of a £30bn funding gap by 2020. Using some of the £2bn raised from Labour’s proposed high value property tax will be seen as a move to soak the rich rather than ask ordinary taxpayers to top up the health budget. Mapping out his 10-year “national mission” to transform Britain, Mr Miliband pledged that the number of first-time home buyers would be doubled to 400,000 a year under a Labour Government. Read more on the Independent website.

Conservative Conference: Housing Round-Up

From housing benefit cuts for unemployed under-25s to Eric Pickles's tenants charter, catch up with all the housing news from the Conservative conference. Here are the headlines;

·         Housing benefit to be withdrawn for unemployed under-25s

·         Eric Pickles unveils tenants' charter

·         Help to Buy scheme brought forward

·         Armed forces offered interest-free home loans

Read more on the Guardian website.

Put Communities In Charge Of Planning Decisions, Conservatives Told

Planning decisions should be made by communities, rather than local or national government, to increase the supply of housing and reduce the pressure on the social housing sector, delegates at the Conservative party conference heard. Alex Morton, head of housing and planning at the Policy Exchange thinktank, said the planning system was broken down and that prescriptive regulations were constraining development. Instead of planning and housing orders being handed down by central or local government, decisions should be made by local communities. This would, he said, eliminate clashes with local people and ensure developments would be designed to add value to an area, rather than be imposed on communities against their will. Read more on the Guardian website.

Landlords in A Pickle as Tenants' Charter Breaches Buy-To-Let Terms

Millions of people trapped in a cycle of short-term rental tenancies will be able to demand that landlords give them longer contracts, expected to be between two and five years, under a "tenants' charter" unveiled by communities secretary Eric Pickles. However, the move threatens to put large numbers of landlords in breach of buy-to-let mortgage terms, which generally stipulate that tenancy agreements be no more than one year. Pickles told the Conservative party conference: "Today's proposals will raise the quality and choice of rental accommodation, root out the cowboys and rogue operators in the sector, and give tenants the confidence to request longer fixed-term, family-friendly tenancies that meet their needs."  Read more on the Guardian website.

Sleepy Housing Associations Must Become More Efficient, Says Boles

Conservative ministers have warned housing associations must become much more efficient in their use of assets if they are to remain ‘relevant’. Planning minister Nick Boles attacked the ‘sleepier’ associations that were not making best use of their existing stock to build more homes.  Speaking at a fringe session of the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, Mr Boles said: ‘The difficulty is we have no mechanism – no innate process for driving out the weaker associations and making sure the fire-power is in the hands of those who will make the best use of it. ‘If the sector could find a way of getting those sleepier institutions in to more dynamic hands then I think you would find ministers would be very supportive.’ Read more on Inside Housing.

Cameron Brings Forward Help to Buy

A controversial scheme allowing people across the UK to take out 95% mortgages will be launched next week - three months earlier than planned. PM David Cameron made the announcement as the Conservatives gathered in Manchester for their annual conference. He told the BBC's Andrew Marr show the market was "recovering from a very low base" and first-time buyers needed help to get on the housing ladder. "As prime minister I am not going to stand by while people's aspirations to get on the housing ladder are being trashed." He rejected concerns - raised by Business Secretary Vince Cable among others - of an unsustainable boom in house prices, particularly in the south-east of England. Read more on the BBC website.

Housing Benefit Cap Will Be 'Kept Under Review', Says Freud

The minister in charge of UK welfare reform has reiterated a pledge that a cap on housing benefit payments to the rate of inflation will be monitored and altered if it fails to keep pace with rents. Speaking at the Conservative Party conference Lord Freud also said a series of ‘randomised trials’ – including on housing - were being introduced to measure the impact of welfare changes into the single universal credit. Lord Freud said: ‘We will be monitoring how the CPI cap works as clearly we can’t put it on forever. And we will make the appropriate adjustments on the basis of what we find.’ Read more on Inside Housing.

Labour Conference: Housing Round-Up

Housing will become a "great national priority" under a Labour government, said shadow housing minister Jack Dromey at the Labour party conference – and the range of plans that emerged appeared to support that. After a long policy silence, Labour announced a string of housing plans, including;

• Increase housebuilding rates to 200,000 a year by 2020
• Use-it-or-lose-it deals for developers
• Mansion tax
• Cities given the 'right to grow'
• Repeal the bedroom tax
• Scrapping the affordable rent programme
• … but the right-to-buy will remain

For more details of these plans go to the Guardian website.

Labour Plans for One Million New Homes

Ed Miliband will set out plans to build one million new homes in the biggest building programme for a generation.  The Labour leader will use his big conference speech to announce a wave of new towns and garden cities to ease the housing crisis.  The scheme will also kick start the economy by creating hundreds of thousands of construction industry jobs and apprenticeships. It means a Labour government elected in 2015 would build 200,000 homes a year by 2020. Read more on the Daily Mirror website.

Bedroom Tax: Labour Will Scrap Hated Levy

Ed Miliband has decided to pledge that a Labour government will bury the hated Bedroom Tax.  The Labour leader could unveil his plan as early as this month in his Brighton conference speech.  But some top Labour figures are urging him to keep his ­powder dry and use the abolition like a rabbit out of the hat at the height of the 2015 General Election campaign. A senior source in the party said: “Labour WILL repeal the Bedroom Tax. The only question remaining is when. But the sooner it’s ­buried, the better. It’s not just cruel and inhumane in impact but it’s ­turning out to be the economics of the madhouse.”  Read more on the Daily Mirror website.

Motion Opposing Bedroom Tax Could Be Defeated

Liberal Democrat MPs have warned the party they could face defeat over a motion opposing the bedroom tax tabled for next month’s conference.  The motion demands an immediate review of the policy.  John Leech, MP for Manchester Withington said: ‘I will certainly vote for that motion, there is no question about it. The motion slams the policy for discriminating against the most vulnerable in society and says outside of London there are ‘insufficiently large, diverse and dynamic social housing markets to make moving into a smaller property locally a viable option.’  If the motion is passed at the conference, it will become party policy under the Liberal Democrat’s rules. Read more on Inside Housing.