Government Unveils Its Housing White Paper

The government has published details of its housing white paper, which it claims will help fix the country’s broken housing market.

A raft of measures have been announced that will impact house builders, as well as home buyers, landlords and tenants.

In terms of housing construction, the government has pledged to reduce the obstacles to house building, with the aim of encouraging local authorities, developers and SME builders to construct more homes to meet the country’s growing need.

When it comes to the house building process, the government is consulting on a standardised way of calculating future housing demand, and wants local authorities to have a plan for house building place which is reviewed every five years.

Developers will be expected to start building more quickly once planning permission is granted – within two years rather than the current three – and will have to provide more information about delivery timescales to allow local authorities to plan for this.

This all comes after the government released £7 billion as part of an expansion of the affordable housing programme, which is designed to encourage house builders to deliver more properties that meet a variety of needs, from rent to buy and shared ownership to those with affordable rent.

The aim is to deliver 40,000 new affordable housing starts across the UK.

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