Housing finance reform among coalition priorities

In a document published this morning the government referred to the current housing subsidy system as ‘unfair’. It did not set out a timetable for the review or what options it would consider. The previous Labour administration completed a review of the system last year and set out plans to abolish it.

The coalition government document also commits to phasing out the ring fencing of grants to local government. Public sector workers will be handed the right to form employee-owned co-operatives and bid to take over the services they deliver.

‘This will empower millions of public sector workers to become their own boss and help them to deliver better services,’ it states

It also pledges to abolish the Government Office for London and consider the case for abolishing the remaining government offices.

The coalition will also scrap the restructuring of councils in Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon and abolish the comprehensive area assessment.

It will establish a commission on long-term care to report within a year. Its social care plans will also see a ‘greater roll-out of personal budgets to give people and their carers more control’.

It also promises to ‘promote shared ownership schemes and help social tenants and others to own or part-own their home’.

The coalition also indicates that it will target the farming community to drive up development. It says: ‘We will promote “Home on the Farm” schemes that encourage farmers to convert existing buildings into affordable housing.’

It adds that it will create directly elected mayors in the 12 largest English cities, subject to referendums and full scrutiny by councillors.

Its plans for the Communities and Local Government department focus largely on devolving power to councils and community groups.

It confirms the government will ‘rapidly abolish regional spatial strategies and return decision-making on housing and planning to local councils’.

‘We will publish and present to Parliament a simple and consolidated national planning framework covering all forms of development and setting out national economic, environmental and social priorities,’ the document adds.

‘In the longer term, we will radically reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape of the places in which their inhabitants live, based on the principles set out in the Conservative Party publication Open Source Planning.’

The coalition also promises it will ‘require continuous improvements to the energy efficiency of new housing’. It will establish a green investment bank and encourage home energy efficiency improvements using savings from energy bills.

The document does not refer to housing benefit specifically but it states that the government ‘will investigate how to simplify the benefit system in order to improve incentives to work’. All existing welfare to work programmes will be axed and a single programme will be set up ‘to help all unemployed people get back into work’.

It adds that it would stop the deportation of asylum seekers who have had to leave particular countries because their sexual orientation would put them at risk.

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