Labour policy brief - housing

Continuing our series of posts on Labour’s policy priorities, we consider where the Opposition sits on housing and planning.

If your organisation is interested in a more in-depth briefing on this, or any other of our topics, please contact julius@justcommunications.co.uk.

Brief #3 - housing and planning

Has the Labour Party found a wedge issue in housing?

With the Conservatives abandoning house building targets, and a reluctant Liberal Democrat leadership trying, but failing, to soften targets, Labour seized the opportunity at its Conference in October to reinforce its new position as ‘The party of homeownership’.

Labour’s Leader Keir Starmer used a BBC interview ahead of conference to pledge that Labour would “build 1.5 million homes” over a first term in power and significantly increase the number of affordable homes being built.

Then during his conference speech Starmer put housebuilding, and giving people the security of homeownership, at the heart of his pitch to an electorate who will go to the polls in 2024.

While Labour is yet to make detailed policy commitments, the broad principles “to get Britain building again” were set out with Starmer pledging to:

-          ‘Bulldoze’ through the country’s restrictive planning system to unblock stalled projects.

-          Take on ‘land bankers’ holding onto brownfield sites.   

-          Confront councils without a local plan.

-          Create new development corporations with power to remove planning blockages.

-          Build a “new generation” of Labour new towns.

-          Allow new infrastructure like energy, roads, and tunnels to be built faster.

-          ‘Re-wire’ the National Grid more rapidly.

-          Challenge greenbelt planning rules.

Labour is banking on this narrative appealing to voters squeezed financially by a slowdown in housebuilding that has seen the cost of owning and renting spike in the UK over recent years.

But how can Labour make change happen and reform a planning system that has resisted significant change since the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was introduced in 2012.

A priority will be to insist that the two thirds of local authorities without an up-to-date local plan, which sets out how housing needs will be met in their area, ‘sprint’ to develop and agree one. This push will be supported by centrally recruited planners who will go into councils and drive local plans through.

The party is also signaling its willingness to step into local planning application decisions, using call-in powers where necessary to unblock approvals. Where there are Mayoral areas, additional powers over planning and investment decisions will be devolved to them for the same outcome.

Increasing the volume of affordable housing will also be prioritised and backed financially. Deputy Leader and shadow Housing minister, Angela Rayner, has stated that Section 106 agreements will be reformed to see private developers compelled to provide more affordable stock within developments.

At the same time central government’s Affordable Homes Programme, which funds social housing development by housing associations and local authorities, will be reformed to be more flexible. For example HAs and local authorities will be allowed to use a greater proportion of the grant funding received to buy properties they can then rent out.

Labour under Starmer and Rayner have been consistent in their message that housing, alongside decent work, are the pillars that provide security, opportunity, thriving communities and a successful society.

The message from what is likely to be the last Labour conference before a General Election is that housing is a battleground Labour believe they can fight on and win.

As Starmer concluded from under his glittering mop of hair in Liverpool -  “Our Labour era will unleash the ‘big build’. And the winner this time will be working people, everywhere.”