AFFORDABLE HOMES
Ten years of Labour rule has created a housing
crisis. House prices keep rising, and more and more young
people can’t even afford a place to live. The Liberal Democrats are determined
to create new opportunities for people to afford their first
home.
The average house price in the UK has now topped
£200,000 pushing the price of homes beyond the reach of many first time
buyers. In 1997 the average house price was
£76,000. This increase in house prices now means according to
the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that house prices are more than five times the
income of working households in 78 areas. As a result young
people, in particular in rural areas, are no longer able to afford to live in
the community they grew up in and remain living near their relatives and
friends.
We will help tackle the affordable housing crisis by making
available public sector land for community land trusts, by encouraging local
authorities to make use of equity mortgages pioneered by the Liberal Democrats
in South Shropshire, and by bringing some of the 723,000 empty homes in England
back into use.
In areas where second homes are
overwhelming the local housing market, we will require people to get planning
permission before turning another full-time home into a holiday
home.
Mutual ownership
schemes and community land trusts
Labour has
introduced a variety of shared ownership schemes. The problem
with them is that they are not open to all (key workers being a priority), and
they are only affordable the first time they are bought.
After the first sale they are sold on the open market placing them, all
too often, out of the reach of other first time buyers.
Liberal Democrats would invest in new mutual
ownership schemes that would provide affordable homes that remain
affordable. Our policies would create an intermediate housing
market, bridging the gap between the rented sector and the private housing
market so that local people on low incomes and first time buyers can afford to
take the first step into home ownership.
Mutual ownership schemes
separate the cost of a house from the cost of the land it stands on.
Rather than buying your home right out, the land on which the homes are built
would be owned by a separate non-profit-making Community Trust. By excluding the
cost of the land from the cost of the house, affordability is locked
in. We would review surplus public land such as that held by
the Ministry of Defence or the Department of Health and hand this land to
community land trusts to build affordable homes on.
Mutual ownership
schemes also mean the homes they build remain affordable in the long
term. Rather than buying their home, people buy shares in the
mutual ownership scheme, increasing the size of their stake as time goes
on. When they want to move on their shares can be sold back
to the scheme, or to someone else looking to join it.
New forms of low costs home
ownership
As well as promoting mutual ownership schemes, we
would also promote new forms of shared ownership including use of “equity
mortgages”. These were developed by the Liberal Democrats in
South Shropshire. Under the scheme the homes remain
affordable because the council or housing association can set limits on who buys
them, keeping price rises down.
Empty
homes
At time when there are so many homeless people, the
existence of so many empty homes is a scandal. We have campaigned
successfully to provide local councils with the power to impose management
orders on homes left empty for more than a year and whose owners have refused to
cooperate in bringing them back into use. A Liberal Democrat government would
encourage councils to make more use of such orders.
Second homes
There are some areas
of the country (especially the South West, but also the Lake District and Welsh
Marches) where many homes have been bought as holiday homes.
The result is that some communities consist of large numbers
of homes that are occupied for only part of the year, leaving the sustainability
of them in doubt. Local services such as shops, post offices
and schools are not viable in communities which are deserted for long
periods.
We will give councils the power to require planning
permission be granted before existing or new homes can be changed into
second. The power will not be retrospective and will only be
granted for those areas with high numbers of second homes.
As part of our
proposals to set councils free from Whitehall we propose relocalising Business
Rates. We would therefore also allow councils to levy
business rates on second homes.
Liberal Democrats believe
decent housing should be a right. We want to meet people’s aspirations to own
their home by increasing the number of affordable homes.
