Election Insight: manifesto housing pledges at-a-glance

Labour

New homes

• Invest to build more than one million new homes
• Establish a new “Department for Housing” tasked with improving the “number, standards and affordability of homes”
• Overhaul the Homes and Communities Agency and give new powers to councils to “build the homes local communities need”
• Prioritise building on brownfield sites
• Protect the green belt
• Start work on a new generation of new towns
• Make housebuilding a priority through a new “National Transformation Fund” as part of a joined-up industrial and skills strategy

Councils and housing associations

• Pledge to be building “at least 100,000 council and housing association homes a year for genuinely affordable rent or sale” by 2022
• Suspend the Right to Buy unless councils can prove they have a plan to replace homes on a like-for-like basis
• Ensure that Local Plans “address the need for older people’s housing”, ensuring downsizing options are available

Homelessness

• End rough sleeping within the next parliament
• Make 4,000 extra homes available for people with a history of rough sleeping
• Safeguard homelessness hostels and supported housing from cuts to housing benefit

Welfare

• Scrap the bedroom tax
• Reverse the decision to abolish housing benefit for 18 to 21-year-olds
• “Reform and redesign” Universal Credit

Homeowners

• Guarantee Help to Buy funding until 2027
• Give local people buying their first home “first dibs” on new homes built in their area
• Give leaseholders “security from rip-off ground rents” and end the routine use of leasehold houses in new developments

Private rented sector

• Make three-year tenancies the norm, with rent rises capped in line with inflation
• Legislate to ban letting agency fees
• Give renters new consumer rights
• Introduce new standards to ensure properties are “fit for human habitation”

Environment and other

• Insulate more homes
• Consult on new minimum space standards and on standards for zero carbon homes
• Keep the Land Registry in public hands

Liberal Democrats

New homes

• Set up a housing and infrastructure development bank to provide long-term capital for major new developments
• Directly commission homes
• Build 300,000 homes a year for sale and rent, with 100,000 of these affordable and energy efficient
• Create 10 new garden cities

Councils and housing associations

• End Voluntary Right to Buy for housing associations, drop the higher-value asset levy and allow councils to scrap Right to Buy if they choose
• Allow councils to charge 200% council tax on empty homes, including those bought and left empty by foreign investors
• Allow councils to penalise developers when they haven’t built for three years on land where they have planning permission
• Lift the borrowing cap on councils and increase borrowing capacity for housing associations through increased access to finance
• Require Local Plans to take into account at least 15 years of housing need
• Drop the affordable housing exemption for smaller sites
• Introduce a community right of appeal if planning decisions go against a Local Plan

Homelessness

• Require all councils to have at least one Housing First provider for “long-term, entrenched” homeless people.

Welfare

• Scrap the bedroom tax but incentivise councils to help people to downsize
• Increase Local Housing Allowance rates in line with average rents

Homeowners

• Introduce Rent to Buy with outright ownership after 30 years
• Introduce a Help to Rent scheme to provide government-backed tenancy deposit loans for all first-time renters under 30

Environment and other

• Provide four million homes with insulation retrofitting by 2022
• Restore the zero carbon standard for new homes

Scottish National Party

New homes

• Continue housing policy in Scotland, which has the highest housebuilding rate in the UK

Welfare

• Support restoration of housing support for 18 to 21-year-olds across the UK
• Fully mitigate the bedroom tax in Scotland, protecting over 70,000 households, and abolish the tax completely when the Scottish government has the powers.

Other

• Push the UK government to work with the devolved administrations and local authorities to provide services for asylum seekers rather than use private contractors who have profit rather than people as their prime motive.

-Housing is devolved to the Scottish Parliament.

-This article was originally published two weeks ago