Ministers have announced a £5bn package of measures to increase the rate of housebuilding, including £2bn long-term funding for infrastructure and action to increase housing on brownfield land, particularly around transport hubs.
Chancellor Philip Hammond and communities secretary Sajid Javid have launched a £3bn Home Building Fund, which they said would provide £1bn of short-term loan funding and £2bn long-term funding, which also appears to be in the form of loans, for infrastructure.
The Conservative Party said the £1bn short-term funding would deliver 25,500 homes during this Parliament, while the £2bn funding for infrastructure would be used to unlock a pipeline of up to 200,000 homes, with an emphasis on brownfield development.
In addition, under an ‘Accelerated Construction’ scheme, the Government will take ‘direct action’ to encourage building on surplus public land, at a cost of £2bn of new public sector net borrowing.
Speaking at the Conservative Party conference, Mr Javid said: ‘Everyone agrees we need to build more homes. But too many of us object to them being built next to us.’
He added: ‘The big developers must release their stranglehold on supply. It’s time to stop sitting on landbanks, delaying build-out: the homebuyers must come first.’
Ministers also announced a renewed emphasis on urban regeneration, including ‘radically’ increasing brownfield development and ‘increasing density of housing around transport hubs’, as well as changing national planning policy to create a ‘de facto’ presumption in favour of housing on brownfield land.
The two measures were included in a Government consultation on proposed changes to national planning last December.
A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government told Transport Network that ministers are still considering the other proposals in the consultation, which closed in February.
It appears that not all of the £3bn Home Building Fund is new money. The Conservative Party said £1.15bn was ‘new’ money announced at the Spending Review (£800m of the £2bn for long-term loans and £325m of the £1bn for short-term loans).
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