Labour will recapture the post-war spirit for building new homes, Reynolds will announce

Emma Reynolds, Shadow Housing Minister, will today explain Labour’s housing policy.

At the the Annual Sir Frederic Osborn Lecture to the Town and Country Planning Association, Reynolds will say that the Conservative’s approach to housing has been characterised by “empty announcements” and “failed initiatives”.

To make her point she will unveil new figures which show that on current trends, if the Government record is repeated until 2020, home ownership levels will fall to their lowest levels for 40 years with more than two in five people expected to rent. And she will say Only one in five people under the age of 35 will own their own home, half the number that did in 2010. 

She will reiterate Labour’s housing policy which includes giving communities more power to build homes, building more affordable homes and giving first time home buyers priority in ‘Housing Growth Areas’.

Reynolds is expected to say:

“Over the past five years, David Cameron has presided over the lowest levels of house building in peace time since the 1920s. 

“For a whole generation of young people and families the aspiration of buying their own home is becoming a distant dream. A record number of young people are still living at home with their parents in their twenties and thirties because they can’t get on the housing ladder.” 

“After five years of empty announcements and failed initiatives the Tories are offering more of the same. But they can’t even say how their latest pie-in-the-sky scheme will work or how they will pay for the £8.6 billion cost of the supposed 20 per cent discounts that are on offer.

“Five more years of the Tories’ failed plan will see a growing housing gap, falling home ownership and unrealised aspiration for the next generation.”

“Labour has developed the first comprehensive plan for a generation to tackle the housing crisis. A Labour Government will get at least 200,000 homes built a year by 2020 but we won’t stop there.

“The next Labour Government will recapture the post-war spirit for building new homes and match that renewed ambition with a drive to build high quality homes and great places for new communities.

“While the Tories still believe, despite their failure over the past five years, that the housing crisis will be solved by the market alone, Labour is clear that to tackle the housing crisis there must be a much more active role for national and local government.

“Under Labour’s plan, local government will take a major new role in assembling land, delivering infrastructure and commissioning housing development. But to succeed, it will be a partnership with the private sector, attracting private investment and commissioning private developers to build the homes we need.

“Labour will also increase competition in the building industry, build more affordable homes and unleash a new programme of New Towns and Garden Cities.”