Angela Rayner announces a plan to build 1.5 million homes over five years to address England's housing crisis. The plan includes restoring mandatory housing targets and freeing up low-quality green belt land for construction.
Angela Rayner has rubbished 'nonsense' claims Labour wants to 'concrete over' the countryside as she unveiled her plans for a fresh generation of new towns.
The new towns will each deliver at least 10,000 homes and will be 'places designed so well that you, me, anyone and everyone would want to live there', she said. It showed how one Tory-controlled council in England will be told to build an astonishing seven times as many houses as it is currently doing.
While some of the new communities set to be built through the programme will be separate from existing towns, others will be urban extensions and regeneration schemes of existing places. ''Britain is already too crowded!' they will say, or, 'There's no countryside left – it's all been concreted over!',' she added.'I could gently reassure them. Or, more likely, I can just say: 'It's nonsense.' Only around 10 per cent of our country is built on.
'The New Towns Taskforce, it will take them - hopefully, before a year - but up to 12 months for them to look at what sites are available.In a statement to the House of Commons, Ms Rayner yesterday told MPs her proposed new method for calculating local housing targets will include 'an uplift where house prices are most out of step with local incomes'.
This is also nearly seven times the average number of new homes built in the Hampshire town - where Tory ex-home secretary Suella Braverman is the local MP - in 2020/21 and 2022/23 of just 115. This is also a huge increase from the 132 new homes that have actually been built, on average, in recent years.
The Isle of Wight will be told to build more than double the average number of new homes it achieved in those two years under a proposed new target of 1,104. Kemi Badenoch, the shadow housing secretary and a Tory leadership candidate, questioned why Labour was reducing the overall housing target for London from nearly 100,000 to around 80,000.
The Deputy PM also set out Labour's plan to release parts of the protected green belt for development. 'They knew that this would tank housing supply, but they still did it. And as I stand here today, I can now reveal the result.She added: 'Decisions about what to build should reflect local views… well, that should be about how to deliver new homes, not whether to.
'Rather than relying on outdated data, this new method will require local authorities to plan for homes proportionate to the size of existing communities, and it will incorporate an uplift where house prices are most out of step with local incomes.' Any green belt land released will be subject to 'golden rules' to ensure the development delivers 50 per cent affordable homes and has access to green spaces and infrastructure such as schools and GP surgeries.
Details of Government investment in the form of direct grant funding for social and affordable housing, as well as on rent stability, will be brought forward at the autumn spending review.
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