Labour leader Ed Miliband has endorsed a blueprint to build 200,000 homes a year by 2020, as set out in today’s Lyons Report.
The housing plan explains how the party would reform housing policy to build thousands of new homes and double the number of first-time buyers over the next ten years. The reforms would make it mandatory for all councils to produce a homebuilding plan for their area and ensure they allocate enough land for development to meet local housing need.
Sir Michael Lyons, who led the review, said: ‘My report sets out a comprehensive plan to tackle the key problems that underpin our failure to build enough homes. This will require strong leadership from central government alongside the delegation of powers and responsibility so that every community provides the homes they need.
‘The recommendations will make more land available for new homes; unlock investment in infrastructure; and ensure that new homes are built when and where they are needed in attractive, thriving places. That will involve a more active role for local government in assembling land and in risk sharing partnerships with developers, landowners.’
Mr Miliband said the reforms would also give local communities more power to unlock developments. The policy would allow local authorities to designate new Housing Growth Areas, which would have powers to assemble land.
He said: ‘We will also make sure that communities get the benefit from new home development by guaranteeing that where communities take the lead in bringing forward additional developments, a significant proportion of homes on those sites cannot be bought by anyone before first-time buyers from the area have been given the chance.
‘This is not only a fairer system, it is also one which will encourage local communities and local authorities to support the development that our country so desperately needs.’
The report also sets out proposals to give local authorities more powers to form Olympic-style New Homes Corporations, with financial incentives to deliver Garden Cities and Garden Suburbs.
