Barwell: longer PRS tenancies in White Paper

It plans to shake up planning rules to allow developers to include more affordable rent within specialist rental developments, and introduce measures to increase the availablities of long term tenancies.

In a statement released over the weekend, the government said it is “working closely with the British Property Federation and National Housing Federation to ensure that these longer-tenancies become widely available”.

The government said it will consult on changing the National Planning Policy Framework so local authorities to instruct councils to “plan proactively” for these rental homes.

It will also alter affordable housing rules to allow developers of Build to Rent to offer a discount rent on certain apartments, rather than affordable units in perpetuity. This model has been pioneered in several Build to Rent developments, including an Essential Living scheme in Greenwich.

The statement gave no detail on its plans to encourage longer term tenancies, but said the changes would be “flexible… with tenants who prefer a shorter tenancy still able to take up shorter tenancies”.

It confirmed the long-awaited White Paper would be released tomorrow, with a consultation on Build to Rent changes released alongside it.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Politics show, housing minister Gavin Barwell said: “When you see the White Paper you’ll see there’s a package of measures to try and get institutional investment into building new private rented sector homes.”

However, he distinguished this from Labour’s proposals at the 2015 election under Ed Miliband, as it would not include any control on rent.

He told host Andrew Neil: “You’re merging the control of rents people can charge, which we are not proposing, with trying to get longer-term tenancies.”

Mr Barwell also told the show there would be “no change at all” to green belt protections, despite some press coverage suggesting the opposite in the build-up to the release of the paper.

He said the White Paper would seek to increase the mix of developers, and make Britain less reliant on big builders. “We desperately need more homes and we’re too dependent at the moment on a small number of large developers, and we need to look at all the things that we can do to get more people involved in building new housing,” he said.

On an appearance on the ITV’s Peston on Sunday, he added that the policy document would also include measures to increase the number of homes built for older people to help them to downsize.

“We’ve got a lot of demographic change in the country and an increasing older population. So it’s not just about how many houses you build, but are you building the right kind of houses?” he said.

Update: at 11.45am, 6.02.17

This story was updated following the receipt of a briefing from DCLG.