Tories launch housing policy
The Conservatives’ housing spokesman has said a Tory goverment would work to widen private home ownership.
John Hayes told an invited audience in London that the Conservatives would work for social justice in housing so that everyone could afford a safe, warm house.
He accused Labour, in their drive to built hundreds of thousands of affordable homes in the south east, of preparing to “concrete over the south of England with new housing schemes while abandoning regeneration efforts in the north.”
Mr Hayes said his party’s approach, “will serve to give people a greater chance of fulfilling most people’s number one aspiration – to own a home of their own.”
“Affordability is about people, not buildings. Setting affordability targets ignores the plain fact that houses become unaffordable as the market changes. So we must help people to afford the homes that are available.”
The Conservatives, he said, would look at initiatives involving shared equity, noting: “First time buyers who can’t afford to buy 100 per cent of a house might be able to afford a half or two thirds.”
“Building on the policies introduced by the last Conservative government, we will work with the lending industry, builders and local authorities to bring about an equity revolution enabling millions more people to get on the property ladder.”
Turning on the Labour Party, Mr Hayes said: “We have also outlined how our approach would seek to regenerate urban areas – in stark contrast to Labour who would abandon them in favour of concreting over our green fields.”
The Tories called John Prescott’s green belt statistics “bogus” and accused him of failing to tackle town cramming and urban sprawl.
Focussing on regeneration, Mr Hayes pointed to a new ‘Blacklist of Blight’ – a list of old properties and crumbling or disused factories. These would then become priority sites for urban regeneration for a mixed provision of high-quality housing and community services.
This would be part of their urban communities programme designed to ensure that, “once again our cities become places where families want to live and have their children schooled”.
The social benefits of housing ownership have been a core tenet of Conservative policy since the 1980s. During the late 80s and early 90s around 1.5 million council houses were sold off to their tenants as part of a Thatcherite programme to build up a “property owning democracy”.
The ‘right to buy’ in London was restricted in October 2003 by John Prescott who was keen to ensure that the remaining council stock was preserved.
The then shadow local government secretary, David Davis, however pledged that Conservatives would restore the “right to buy” and finish Thatcher’s housing revolution, but this time would plough the money back into more social housing.
