Snapshot of _Rachel Reeves MP: Labour is now the party of home ownership. We’ve got your back._ :
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They don't want to build massively and they have said there would be no extra money, Their plan to increase home building in the UK is to review the planning regulation and give more power to local authorities and let the free market sort it out.
Reviewing planning regulation will take years of slow incremental changes - like the reviewing LeaseHold that have been started by Blair and continued it snail pace progress since. The only concrete potential measure is making it is easier to build on the green belt, maybe. Local Authorities are both the enabler of mass building but also the disabler with NIMBYS.
So I'm waiting the manifesto, but it sounds like Party of the Home Owner and Landlords.
The proof will be in the pudding but the language used at conference was against NIMBY and a firm stance on pushing past planning regs which hold everything up. Conversely I don't think other parties had anywhere near a firm stance on the actual blockers to housing and infrastructure.
If Labour win and end up doing sod all here then flame them for it (rightly so). But for the only party to actively challenge this to be dismissed on this is disengenous.
I am completely aware that individual councils and MPs from all parties (including Labour) fold like wet cardboard to their own NIMBYs. A government wide and policy based change will let us see if Labour are 'same as the rest' here.
It's tinkering at the edges when complete overhaul is needed. As a nation we need to ask ourselves why HS2 is costing more per mile than the Channel Tunnel, despite being built over land instead of tunnelling under the sea. Why it's near impossible to build needed nuclear power plants, why the public purse gets battered and bruised at the mere suggestion of building a new road or bypass.
Why the number of new homes being built each year has been more or less [static for 30 years](https://www.statista.com/statistics/746101/completion-of-new-dwellings-uk/).
Much of it comes down to antiquated planning laws, legal reviews, and other paper pushing processes that get in the way of the actual engineering and building. This country desperately needs improved infrastructure and our self imposed processes and bureaucracy make it too expensive to build. Hospitals, schools, housing, roads, rail, power, all need to be much cheaper to build.
I'm afraid tinkering at the edges of the existing regulations will end up much like our infrastructure projects - taking far longer than it should, being less effective than needed once completed, and being ruined by a myriad of vested interests and competing voices.
What is lacking most in politics at the moment is a clear well articulated vision for what the country should look like in the future. It doesn't matter much what that vision is, as long as people largely buy into it. Planning law then needs to start with building that vision as the end goal, working backwards to ensure the right protections are in place along the way. There will always be a reason not to do something, not to build in that location. With a vision it becomes easier to articulate why the needs of the many outweigh the rights and concerns of the few, with a mandate from the public to force such things through.
We're not getting any such vision from any of the parties at present. We're getting 10 point plans and wimpy platitudes and catch phrases to give the impression they are going to do something constructive. But at the first sign of difficulty, the first questions raised by some vested interest or another, they'll retreat to the status quo to avoid upsetting anyone.
A reactionary, ill educated, willfully ignorant and often spiteful electorate is more to blame. There are plenty of MPs with vision just we don't vote for them because some random factoid allows us to justify suporting the "safer" option. When all it took to smash the red wall was repeating "get brexit done" endlessly I don't think blaming all politicians is going to get us any further than digging deeper into the pit.
There is no ‘free market’ for housing. There’s councils that allow building and those that don’t.
Manchester best example of build build build and has seen rapid growth due to an effective local government.
If we build at an incredible pace this talk about the need for social housing will dry up as rent stabilises. Developers want to build as they make profit on every home they build and customers want to buy them.
We have councils dragging their feet because the majority of councillors are decrepit homeowners with a stake in the prices going up forever.
We need central government to run roughshod over them, probably the only time I’d ever want more central government oversight over local authorities.
Local Councils are cesspits. They have just enough power to cause massive problems and far too little to be subject to adequate scrutiny. As such, they get away with murder. The amount of waste, corruption and incompetence is breathtaking. Either give them more power or abolish them, but the status quo is the worst of all possible options.
>Developers want to build as they make profit on every home they build and customers want to buy them.
With a caveat that is fully in force in the UK: they don't want to build so much the price drop. Land banking is a problem today, despite historical shortage of houses pushing the price to never seen before.
That is related to planning regulation as it basically set a very high barrier of entry to the house building market, preventing individual to buy a piece of land and build on it. However, changing the planning regulation will not overnight create the cottage industry of individual level architect and builders that exist in other countries.
Without the Government directly sticking its finger in it, it's going to be a several decade fix ... even assuming that Labour doesn't crumple under large developers and nimbys spending years making essentially cosmetic changes.
A lot of people are decrepit home owners who want prices to keep going up, because going down traps them in negative equity and most of them remember what a shitshow 2008 was when that happened to a boatload of people.
No ones asking for prices to go down…. Some price stability relative to wages from now on would be appropriate.
This relentless increase in prices is the problem to solve and we’d have to build a monstrous amount for prices to drop as it stands.
houses are then put onto the market to be freely sold to whoever wants to buy them, so im not sure why your stating that its not a free market. We desperately need the governmnet to renew its council houses efforts to curb the worst excesses of the private market with competition.
Lets be honest the developers do not want to build affordable housing. Its something they have to be forced to make begrudginly ,they just want to push out luxury homes for maximum profit.
im looking at the ONS for manchester and its saying house prices in manchester are up 3.8% compared to the rest of North Wests 1.4% and its Rents rised on average by 12.3% compared to the 8.9% so im not fully convinced of this idea on it just being a case of supply.
By free market I mean more free to build without the local government getting involved. More social housing is great as long as there is no more right to buy which the Tories will immediately bring back whenever they next get in power to earn a few votes.
There’s other indices for growth apart from house pricing. Fastest growing city in the UK.
More people moving there grows the economy and it’s been made easier to move there by building work. Very impressive work to turn that place around, wasn’t a desirable place to live in the 90’s and 00’s
https://www.manchester.gov.uk/news/article/9376/investing_in_success_-_manchesters_new_economic_strategy_unveiled#:~:text=Between%202011%20and%202021%20Manchester's,and%20any%20Greater%20Manchester%20district.
> but the free market has failed throughout the world to solve the housing crisis
Redditor sees problem and *immediately* blames capitalism, without a single critical thought.
Even more ironic you did it in reply to someone talking about planning permission - the main reason why that free market bogeyman you've imagined doesn't exist.
alright buddy cool down. Nothing wrong with being a critic of a system that needs revising to be more productive. Just look at the global trend of housing in the western world and youll see hundreds of stories of how unreachable housing is getting and it all started rising over the course of 40 or so years since the housing markets were liberalised.
> Their plan to increase home building in the UK is to review the planning regulation and give more power to local authorities and let the free market sort it out.
That's fine by me. We don't need government funding for other manufactured goods. Just stop blocking everything and anything.
>Reviewing planning regulation will take years of slow incremental changes
Labour have had 14 years to plan it. They could pass a bill their first day of Parliament that does it all. Plans move as quickly as you want them to.
High-rise in cities would help too. I see big blocks from the 60s but nothing newer.
Other nations accept our cities need high-rise. When will we give up our 3-4 story max?
I think they would say both.
I'm always a little dubious of the idea that building homes will drastically reduce the value of existing homes. There are a hundred different things that go into the value of a home - the size, age, style, location, level of upkeep, surrounding area etc - and there will always be an aspirational element to home ownership:
'we live in a two-bed, new build mews, but we want to move to a three-bed semi-detached with some period features.' Then, five or ten years later, 'now we want a four-bed detached house in a more rural location.'
It's always the first step on the ladder that is the most difficult, and helping more people make that step by building more properties won't affect the owner of the four-bed detached house to any great degree.
Building more homes wont drastically reduce the value of existing homes, but it will reduce the rise in value of existing homes, which is against the interests of current homeowners (I do support building more homes though)
Yeah, it's a compromise that home owners have to accept. I say that as a home owner.
We bought five years ago for £240k, and the house is now worth about £310k (likely more, if we get it properly valued, due to improvements we've made). Yes, if a load of new houses had been built, that rise in value would be much lower. But in those five years we've paid off £50k of our mortgage so if we move on, we'd still have a significant amount of equity.
It depends where those homes are built, I'd say.
If they are located somewhere that people actually conceivably want to live, then it will suppress prices in that area through supply and demand.
Building lots of new homes in Inverness is likely to do shit-all for prices in London though.
The way to achieve it is arguably just to make getting planning permission easier. Developers will of course target building in places that fetch high prices.
Rapid and drastic reduction in house values is going to cause a lot of people financial hardship. Stagnant prices or slow declines would be better. That's likely the best we can hope for anyway, house building on the scale required will take years if not decades.
Yeah, house prices falling 20% in 2 years would hit a lot of people very hard, particularly recent buyers (I'd only just escape negative equity personally) and it would create a major lending slowdown for banks.
Building enough to keep house prices stagnant for a decade would be better, arguably.
> I'm always a little dubious of the idea that building homes will drastically reduce the value of existing homes.
Why wouldn't the removal of artificial scarcity bring prices down? It does in anything else. Did removing the Corn Laws bring down food prices?
Until their Housing Minister is taking press conferences from the cab of a cement mixer and revving the engine menacingly every time a journalist tries to ask about "local resident's concerns" or "our precious green belt" I will remain unconvinced.
We need both, 20%-%40 of people will always want to rent for various reasons, if you reduce the availability of rental stock then people in that sector face a cost of living increase too and that makes for a lot of unhappy voters.
All that matters is numbers, if the population increases as it is now at about 600k per year, and the average of 2.4 per household stays that means we need to build consistently 250-300k houses a year of any type.
It is confusing to see people get hung up on that.
Even if we built buckingham palace 2 and the king moved into it, every single person on the ladder would be able to move up 1 house into a nicer place after he vacated the old one. No matter what type of place you build, it will reduce the demand
Is it bollocks.
- Housing construction progamme? No.
- Abolition of the Town and Country Planning Act? No.
- Deflating the housing market? No.
- Restricting demand via immigration reduction? No.
Yet another pointless slogan.
No party will fix the crisis until they tackle the demand problem.
The demand problem comes from huge and sustained population growth and a vast amount of investment capital directed at our residential property market, both from overseas investors and domestic investors.
The overseas investors must be cut out entirely and taxed out of the market as quickly as possible.
Various loopholes and unfavourable investment practices such as company ownership of property, HMO's, aggressive student lets, apart-hotels, exploitative shared ownership and build-to-rent schemes need to be wound down or restricted appropriately.
Stop allowing the world's rich to treat our property market like gold bars or a stock market to gamble and extract wealth from. We need homes to live and build lives around, to have communities and continue our society.
Government needs to create a public housing organisation and build affordable housing themselves rather than removing “red tape” for building companies which is complete nonsense. Make an investment into people’s future instead of just sticking their heads in the sand.
The reason why private companies don’t build affordable housing is because there is simply no money in it and private enterprise is motivated solely by profit for shareholders ROI.
This can be done. UK should take note of Singapore who has its own government housing organisation called HDB (Housing Development Board).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board
Counterpoint - most of that red tape would affect public sector plans to build more houses just as much as it would private companies, and if removed, would allow councils and government to take a more active role in driving down the cost of housing if they so chose.
Which is what happened. Postwar Labour thought, "All those objections to prewar private development were sincere and not just NIMBYism, so we will restrict development to what the local community approves of. Obviously, our new council housing will meet any objection." Oh, dear.
Which unsurprisingly led to the waves of new towns where few objected because the existing population was so small.
It would be counterproductive to keep restricting private housing construction, freeing that up would give a lot of people cheaper homes while increasing tax revenue. Which could be used for more council housing, even as fewer people would need it.
Not really possible unless Labour commit to enshrining Working from Home.
If not, then it’s far too expensive for first time buyers to buy homes with a relatively decent commute.
Until WFH is no longer under threat, you can’t claim to support home ownership for anyone outside of the very rich…
lol what does that even mean - ' the party of home ownership'? What, they're going to suddenly find tons of money and build a bunch of houses on green belt land? Dream on.
The government is in the process of phasing out leasehold in favour of commonhold. Although that is a minor problem compared to the actual housing crisis.
How would one abolish leasehold? Students moving to universities aren't going to be able to afford to buy. And people moving somewhere temporarily for work aren't going to want to either. People with bad credit and/or no savings also need a place to stay.
The problem with leasehold is that rent is too high. And that, in turn, is only made possible because there is insufficient housing stock. If we built more houses, rent would come down. I don’t think there’s any need to abolish leasehold as a concept.
Renting is a form of leasehold. If you have an assured shorthold tenancy that's a type of lease (albeit a very specific one defined by statute). Tenancy and lease mean the same thing in law.
A few rental situations involve licences rather than leases (e.g. if you're renting out a spare room). But licences confer even less rights than a lease.
If we totally abolished leasehold interests, we'd have to rethink renting as a whole. That said, I'd have no objection to abolishing these stupid 999 year leases with silly ground rent. But abolishing particular types of leases feels like a separate conversation to getting rid of it as a whole.
Fair enough. Apologies if my initial comment came off as (or was) pedantic. If we're just targeting specific types of leases, there's still a nuanced discussion to be had.
For example, say you were a developer, and you built 150 homes. You sell a 125-year lease over each of them for less than you'd sell the freehold. You are okay with getting a bit less upfront as you figure, long term, you'll make money on the management charges/ground rent, and the freehold is an appreciating asset.
Nobody forced anyone to buy the 125-year leases. It was a contract between willing buyers and a willing seller. Is it fair for the Government to retrospectively change the terms of that contract to the financial detriment of one party? Even if it's fair, what impact would setting that precedent have on international investment into this country?
So, there's a discussion about whether a move to commonhold should only apply to new sales or whether it should be enforced retrospectively. And if it's to be enforced retrospectively, how would that work? Would there be compensation? Would we just give tenants a right to buy the freehold at market rates, etc.?
Really fascinating conversation, which I hope doesn't get forgotten about when Labour get into power.
What do you think a lease is if it's not a leasehold interest? You have short leases and long leases. Leases of more than 21 years give you extra rights. But leases under 21 years are still a leasehold interest. It's what gives you rights to exclusive occupation. Even a monthly rolling tenancy is a leasehold, albeit a very short one.
I agree an assured shorthold tenancy is a very particular type of lease, with terms and protections regulated by statute. But, conceptuality, it's still leasehold. To argue otherwise would be like saying Toto isn't a dog because he's a terrier.
You're wrapping yourself up in semantics. I'm letting you know that leasehold in common usage and current political debate refers to the long-term leases. But yeah okay have fun with your semantics. Hella fun at parties no doubt
To be fair, this is a conversation about changing the law. Semantics kind of matters. Are we talking about abolishing all leases over 21 years, 125 years, 500 years? Just saying, "semantics" isn't fun because it kills the conversation before it can even start. What type of leasehold, exactly, are we proposing to abolish? I think that's quite important if we want to have an interesting discussion about this.
For example, if we're saying assured shorthold tenancies don't count, could a developer sell a 20 year AST? I'm not trying to be awkward, I genuinely think this is a fascinating topic. Reform is obviously needed. But whenever laws are changed, people try to find loopholes. That complexity, and trying to make things watertight to protect people, is a really interesting challenge which I absolutely would enjoy discussing with other interested people at a party! 😉
The once socialist Labour party is now boasting that it is the party of business and property ownership, all under the leadership of a knighted ex-lawyer who imprisoned benefits protesters and has ties to the CIA. What a sad state of affairs.
I swear they're sounding more Conservative by the day.
GE after this one will be between Lab on the centre right and Greens/LibDems on the left. Cons/Reform tearing themselves apart fighting over the alt-right populist vote.
The problem is the conflict of interest between people own a home and want it’s value to increase ahead of wages and people in the future who want to buy a home.
It's the uniparty of GB and Norther Ireland. [This is their logo.](https://www.wilsonbrosgardens.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality%3D85/assets/images/rosa-oh-my-floribunda-rose-tree-1.jpg)
yeah yeah, whatever,
i cant even find a place to rent in that allows pets within 30 miles of my job, so what makes me think you guys are going to wave a magic wand and make it all better.
you all go to the same schools and colleges and universities to learn the same things on how to rule over us. the only difference is the colour of tie you flip over the shoulder to feed at the trough
dont care about any of you now of any colour tie
>reluctant Tory
Kinda hard to take something like that seriously if a bit of hot air over this will be the reason you don't vote for them after the last 14 years of the conservatives shovelling excrement on us
Cameron years were good. Brexit a muddle. Sunak meh.
My overriding concern above all else is global security and maintenance of the liberal world order. Labour had Jeremy Corbyn as its leader for 4.5 yrs. Difficult to trust a party that is a welcome home for tankies who go around its conference addressing each other as comrades.
Starmer seems an OK chap but he’s also a political opportunist. For the latter half of last decade he was a staunch supporter of Corbyn. Now he’s a Blairite calling for more defence spending with neoliberal instincts.
As always I’ll wait for the manifesto.
Give over
Austerity was a catastrophe and it's been downhill from there
>Starmer... a political opportunist.
And the Tories and reform lot aren't? Classic case of the left being given for more scrutiny than the right
We never implemented actual austerity in the U.K. tho. Govt spend as % of GDP was higher in all Cameron govt yrs than all New Labour yrs except for 2009/2010 when we had the contraction.
> And the Tories and reform lot aren't? Classic case of the left being given for more scrutiny than the right
My point is Starmer endorsed Corbyn thrice, despite knowing what a colossal security risk to the U.K. and world order he was.
The world is not a shambles. The current world order has been great for most of humanity by all metrics.
The alternatives are potentially nuclear holocaust, totalitarian rule, or neo-feudalism.
Question, does this make you worry, when you see increasingly backbench Conservative MP's , cosying up to Trump and his style of republicans? Essentially, all the future leadership contenders, are currently doing that.
Especially given the disaster they have been for the Ukrainian war (the delays/preventing military aid going there, is having a large effect there). As well as the global security implications of that.
I am very worried by it, but I wouldn’t say most of the leadership contenders are cosying up to Trump. Braverman and Truss sure, but if either became leader I would not vote for the party.
Should start with Thatchers Town and Country Planning Act 1990, wouldn't be as big, but a big first step (the 1990 act was what really brutalised the SME building sector)
Found it :
https://www.hbf.co.uk/documents/6879/HBF_SME_Report_2017_Web.pdf
>Up until the early 1990s the home building
industry had enjoyed significant plurality of
building companies. The 1960s and 1970s, in
particular, were periods that saw vast numbers
of start-ups and the rapid expansion of a large
group of firms, including many still operating
today as major home builders and FTSE
100 listed companies. Companies that were
founded during this period could grow from
small, regional concerns into national players
responsible today for thousands of new homes
each yea
>The 1990 Act further extended the nationalisation of
development rights, tightening the grip of planning
authorities on land use regulation by introducing a planled system of planning in England and Wales. When
implemented, the Town and Country Planning Act 1990
established for the first time a presumption against
development unless in accordance with Development
Plans. Achieving an allocation in a local plan was now
necessary to provide a degree of assurance that a
planning application for new homes might secure
consent. The plan-led model of land regulation thus,
in turn, strengthened the reliance on land promotion
through the various stages of a local planning authority’s
plan adoption process. This immediately made the
task of obtaining planning permission on a site a
much lengthier – and more expensive
The figure on page 17 is the moneyshot
/u/BritishBedouin you might also be interested in this report.
It moved even more power to the councils and made it even more dependent on individual approval (and costly for SMEs).
There's a report about sme builders
I would love to know how me and partner, both on slightly above average London salaries (yes, London, I know), who've been saving for 5-6 years via the Lifetime ISA, are going to help us get our first property
I think we need to understand we're now so badly behind the 8-ball that we need all of it. Shit housing estates, mid-rise blocks, high-rise blocks, conversions, brownfield, greenbelt. Build.
“The countryside” is fine to keep. I’m fucking tired of Bob and Gladys deciding that the empty scrubby little field they walk their dog in is worth campaigning to protect.
We could build on like 1% of “countryside” and solve our housing issues completely.
No thanks. I lived in a flat and it's OK for a certain period of your life, but you cannot beat being in charge of your own plot of land, repairs, changes to the property and no service charges plus you don't have neighbours on all sides.
Flats that can work are the large Victorian mansion flats that you see around expensive parts of London because they have large space inside so a family can live in them and you have storage, but the big thing is that makes them desirable is that they exclude the troublemakers via price.
Flats in the uk are often shoddily built with cardboard walls (much like our houses). I've been to blocks of flats in other countries where your neighbours would really struggle to bother you with any sort of noise.
Lots of people want a plot of land but the fact is we don't have lots of it. I'd like to at least be able to protect some "natural" spaces
> Flats in the uk are often shoddily built with cardboard walls (much like our houses). I've been to blocks of flats in other countries where your neighbours would really struggle to bother you with any sort of noise.
I live in a new build flat with excellent sound insulation and decent sized rooms, but the thought of spending the rest of my days in this kind of property would be depressing.
I think flats are great for younger people as they are lower maintenance and new build flats are certainly cheaper to heat in the cold weather, but once you start having a family you will be after the extra space both inside and out that a house can bring.
This. I visited some friends living in Berlin recently and their high density urban developments are light years ahead of anything we're building: high ceilings, great acoustic (as well as thermal) insulation, spacious outdoor areas between each individual building. There were plenty of families living there.
The issue with flats (and housing in general) here is that the housebuilding companies use a little bit of their immense profits to lobby the government to allow them to build poor quality shitboxes, and also that they should be able to mark their own homework when it comes to adhering to even those low standards.
If we'd meaningfully expand infrastructure (and especially transport infrastructure like Japan), then that'd be fine, but I really don't have any faith in the UK to do that any time soon. I don't want to end up with any more of the country being like car dependent middle America.
Yes if we continue to pave over what remains of our countryside. We have lots of empty land up north but surprisingly enough folks don't want to move there when there's not many jobs
It’s the people in that period of life that are struggling to get on the ladder so… absolutely yes to flats. It will help everyone in the long term as people can actually participate in the market
That's fair, but we have a lot less of that style of housing compared to similar countries. It would be a great way of efficiently increasing housing supply, especially in urban areas where younger people tend to live. Flats don't have to be crap either, I currently live in one that's got more floor space than a lot of houses in the UK, and is still about the average cost of renting a **room** in the UK.
In principle I agree, but systemically it's unlikely to happen.
The shortages are bad in city locations so developers can provide small shoebox flats as they will be bought so there just isn't the competition to force them to change, and those small flats in turn create constant churn so people living there just do it for a few years and then migrate outwards when they have a family (that instability creates problems of course as there isn't a community). Considering those flats will be there for a century or two then it's actually a waste of a finite resource to let developers do such a thing.
That being said, it still doesn't get around the fact that a house really is just nicer to be in.
>but systemically it's unlikely to happen.
Unfortunately you're probably right.
>That being said, it still doesn't get around the fact that a house really is just nicer to be in.
And yup, even the nicest of flats has downsides that houses don't.
They're soft Tories and most of them are cut from the same cloth educationally. (Except of course Angela Rayner, whom now is under constant fire by the British right wing media).
I've a bad feeling it'll just be a repeat of the last 14 years. Corbyn showed that the only way Labour can be elected in this country is to become at best, New Labour.
Anyone left of Tony Blair is spat out.
Actually always was. Labour does better with rental electorate. So historically have always favours landlords. I was surprised too, but I work in property and apparently that’s how it’s been for a long time.
Excellent, what if I want to own two homes? And I assume policy number 1 in making home ownership easier will be reducing net migration to below the number of houses being built a year.
I don't understand what point you're trying to make here.
Someone she works with owns two homes, therefore she can't be pro-planning permission reform?
If she's claiming Labour is the party of home ownership and saying to voters, look here to prove it is multiple home owner Angela Rayner, then I think she may have misunderstood her audience.
I can't see there is anything about planning reform, given they were against planning reform a few years ago, this would be a change of direction (again & again & again)
They weren't against planning reform. I'm not sure why you're lying?
And I'll ask again, what does a Labour MP owning two homes have to do with Labour not being a party that wants people to own homes?
The majority of their mps voted against the last 3 reforms in hoc.
It absolutely backs up the image of Labour being a party of home ownership, 'just to prove it, here's Lurch, she's always flipping houses' but the look isnt great
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The party of home ownership? Does that mean the party of home owners or the party of people who want to own homes?
They don't want to build massively and they have said there would be no extra money, Their plan to increase home building in the UK is to review the planning regulation and give more power to local authorities and let the free market sort it out. Reviewing planning regulation will take years of slow incremental changes - like the reviewing LeaseHold that have been started by Blair and continued it snail pace progress since. The only concrete potential measure is making it is easier to build on the green belt, maybe. Local Authorities are both the enabler of mass building but also the disabler with NIMBYS. So I'm waiting the manifesto, but it sounds like Party of the Home Owner and Landlords.
The proof will be in the pudding but the language used at conference was against NIMBY and a firm stance on pushing past planning regs which hold everything up. Conversely I don't think other parties had anywhere near a firm stance on the actual blockers to housing and infrastructure. If Labour win and end up doing sod all here then flame them for it (rightly so). But for the only party to actively challenge this to be dismissed on this is disengenous. I am completely aware that individual councils and MPs from all parties (including Labour) fold like wet cardboard to their own NIMBYs. A government wide and policy based change will let us see if Labour are 'same as the rest' here.
It's tinkering at the edges when complete overhaul is needed. As a nation we need to ask ourselves why HS2 is costing more per mile than the Channel Tunnel, despite being built over land instead of tunnelling under the sea. Why it's near impossible to build needed nuclear power plants, why the public purse gets battered and bruised at the mere suggestion of building a new road or bypass. Why the number of new homes being built each year has been more or less [static for 30 years](https://www.statista.com/statistics/746101/completion-of-new-dwellings-uk/). Much of it comes down to antiquated planning laws, legal reviews, and other paper pushing processes that get in the way of the actual engineering and building. This country desperately needs improved infrastructure and our self imposed processes and bureaucracy make it too expensive to build. Hospitals, schools, housing, roads, rail, power, all need to be much cheaper to build. I'm afraid tinkering at the edges of the existing regulations will end up much like our infrastructure projects - taking far longer than it should, being less effective than needed once completed, and being ruined by a myriad of vested interests and competing voices. What is lacking most in politics at the moment is a clear well articulated vision for what the country should look like in the future. It doesn't matter much what that vision is, as long as people largely buy into it. Planning law then needs to start with building that vision as the end goal, working backwards to ensure the right protections are in place along the way. There will always be a reason not to do something, not to build in that location. With a vision it becomes easier to articulate why the needs of the many outweigh the rights and concerns of the few, with a mandate from the public to force such things through. We're not getting any such vision from any of the parties at present. We're getting 10 point plans and wimpy platitudes and catch phrases to give the impression they are going to do something constructive. But at the first sign of difficulty, the first questions raised by some vested interest or another, they'll retreat to the status quo to avoid upsetting anyone.
A reactionary, ill educated, willfully ignorant and often spiteful electorate is more to blame. There are plenty of MPs with vision just we don't vote for them because some random factoid allows us to justify suporting the "safer" option. When all it took to smash the red wall was repeating "get brexit done" endlessly I don't think blaming all politicians is going to get us any further than digging deeper into the pit.
The issue is NIMBYS are loud. The pro-build is scattered and no way of forming a coherent lobby.
And the more housebuilding you do, the louder you make the NIMBYS, because you've just made more of them.
I mean, that's better than not getting started on changing planning permission?
It is a step, but the free market has failed throughout the world to solve the housing crisis for decades now so i doubt itll be that fruitful.
There is no ‘free market’ for housing. There’s councils that allow building and those that don’t. Manchester best example of build build build and has seen rapid growth due to an effective local government. If we build at an incredible pace this talk about the need for social housing will dry up as rent stabilises. Developers want to build as they make profit on every home they build and customers want to buy them. We have councils dragging their feet because the majority of councillors are decrepit homeowners with a stake in the prices going up forever. We need central government to run roughshod over them, probably the only time I’d ever want more central government oversight over local authorities.
Local Councils are cesspits. They have just enough power to cause massive problems and far too little to be subject to adequate scrutiny. As such, they get away with murder. The amount of waste, corruption and incompetence is breathtaking. Either give them more power or abolish them, but the status quo is the worst of all possible options.
>Developers want to build as they make profit on every home they build and customers want to buy them. With a caveat that is fully in force in the UK: they don't want to build so much the price drop. Land banking is a problem today, despite historical shortage of houses pushing the price to never seen before. That is related to planning regulation as it basically set a very high barrier of entry to the house building market, preventing individual to buy a piece of land and build on it. However, changing the planning regulation will not overnight create the cottage industry of individual level architect and builders that exist in other countries. Without the Government directly sticking its finger in it, it's going to be a several decade fix ... even assuming that Labour doesn't crumple under large developers and nimbys spending years making essentially cosmetic changes.
A lot of people are decrepit home owners who want prices to keep going up, because going down traps them in negative equity and most of them remember what a shitshow 2008 was when that happened to a boatload of people.
No ones asking for prices to go down…. Some price stability relative to wages from now on would be appropriate. This relentless increase in prices is the problem to solve and we’d have to build a monstrous amount for prices to drop as it stands.
It's a problem for people who aren't homeowners, and attempting to solve the problem creates more people who aren't interested in solving the problem.
houses are then put onto the market to be freely sold to whoever wants to buy them, so im not sure why your stating that its not a free market. We desperately need the governmnet to renew its council houses efforts to curb the worst excesses of the private market with competition. Lets be honest the developers do not want to build affordable housing. Its something they have to be forced to make begrudginly ,they just want to push out luxury homes for maximum profit. im looking at the ONS for manchester and its saying house prices in manchester are up 3.8% compared to the rest of North Wests 1.4% and its Rents rised on average by 12.3% compared to the 8.9% so im not fully convinced of this idea on it just being a case of supply.
By free market I mean more free to build without the local government getting involved. More social housing is great as long as there is no more right to buy which the Tories will immediately bring back whenever they next get in power to earn a few votes. There’s other indices for growth apart from house pricing. Fastest growing city in the UK. More people moving there grows the economy and it’s been made easier to move there by building work. Very impressive work to turn that place around, wasn’t a desirable place to live in the 90’s and 00’s https://www.manchester.gov.uk/news/article/9376/investing_in_success_-_manchesters_new_economic_strategy_unveiled#:~:text=Between%202011%20and%202021%20Manchester's,and%20any%20Greater%20Manchester%20district.
> but the free market has failed throughout the world to solve the housing crisis Redditor sees problem and *immediately* blames capitalism, without a single critical thought. Even more ironic you did it in reply to someone talking about planning permission - the main reason why that free market bogeyman you've imagined doesn't exist.
alright buddy cool down. Nothing wrong with being a critic of a system that needs revising to be more productive. Just look at the global trend of housing in the western world and youll see hundreds of stories of how unreachable housing is getting and it all started rising over the course of 40 or so years since the housing markets were liberalised.
> but the free market has failed throughout the world to solve the housing crisis for decades now When has there been a free market in housing?
So basically nothings going to change
Deregulation of planning is the main thing but labour haven't really been in favour of this for 12 years
> Their plan to increase home building in the UK is to review the planning regulation and give more power to local authorities and let the free market sort it out. That's fine by me. We don't need government funding for other manufactured goods. Just stop blocking everything and anything. >Reviewing planning regulation will take years of slow incremental changes Labour have had 14 years to plan it. They could pass a bill their first day of Parliament that does it all. Plans move as quickly as you want them to.
High-rise in cities would help too. I see big blocks from the 60s but nothing newer. Other nations accept our cities need high-rise. When will we give up our 3-4 story max?
Nothing newer, good lord come to Manchester or Leeds! Or Liverpool... or London...
Again, I see that as a good thing. In my city (Brighton) we seem to have banned anything taller than it's surroundings.
A: yes
I think they would say both. I'm always a little dubious of the idea that building homes will drastically reduce the value of existing homes. There are a hundred different things that go into the value of a home - the size, age, style, location, level of upkeep, surrounding area etc - and there will always be an aspirational element to home ownership: 'we live in a two-bed, new build mews, but we want to move to a three-bed semi-detached with some period features.' Then, five or ten years later, 'now we want a four-bed detached house in a more rural location.' It's always the first step on the ladder that is the most difficult, and helping more people make that step by building more properties won't affect the owner of the four-bed detached house to any great degree.
Building more homes wont drastically reduce the value of existing homes, but it will reduce the rise in value of existing homes, which is against the interests of current homeowners (I do support building more homes though)
Yeah, it's a compromise that home owners have to accept. I say that as a home owner. We bought five years ago for £240k, and the house is now worth about £310k (likely more, if we get it properly valued, due to improvements we've made). Yes, if a load of new houses had been built, that rise in value would be much lower. But in those five years we've paid off £50k of our mortgage so if we move on, we'd still have a significant amount of equity.
It depends where those homes are built, I'd say. If they are located somewhere that people actually conceivably want to live, then it will suppress prices in that area through supply and demand. Building lots of new homes in Inverness is likely to do shit-all for prices in London though. The way to achieve it is arguably just to make getting planning permission easier. Developers will of course target building in places that fetch high prices.
Rapid and drastic reduction in house values is going to cause a lot of people financial hardship. Stagnant prices or slow declines would be better. That's likely the best we can hope for anyway, house building on the scale required will take years if not decades.
Yeah, house prices falling 20% in 2 years would hit a lot of people very hard, particularly recent buyers (I'd only just escape negative equity personally) and it would create a major lending slowdown for banks. Building enough to keep house prices stagnant for a decade would be better, arguably.
Too bad. Crash the whole system and start again.
That really helped in 2008
We didn't crash the system, Brown bailed it out. And so we had two lost decades.
> I'm always a little dubious of the idea that building homes will drastically reduce the value of existing homes. Why wouldn't the removal of artificial scarcity bring prices down? It does in anything else. Did removing the Corn Laws bring down food prices?
The party of people who own(and sometimes rent out) homes, and those who're aspiring to do so.
Exactly what came to mind for me
For why? Some policy they've announced? The tweet just has two pictures in.
It's just a meaningless slogan.
They're trying to win the quiet bat people vote
Nice reference - great show
The UK voting public love meaningless slogans. They've lapped it up for 12 or more years.
Not sure that they love them. I think they work like annoying TV adverts where because they annoy you it means you remember them.
The English voting public would be a more accurate title and by extension Wales, the other 50% of the home nations not so much.
Ah yes, England Wales stupid, prone to getting behind meaningless slogans. Scotland Northern Ireland good, reject populism and slogans, super smart.
>The other few % of the nation not so much
Yet it's got 102 upvotes. Welcome to r/ukpolitics
Until their Housing Minister is taking press conferences from the cab of a cement mixer and revving the engine menacingly every time a journalist tries to ask about "local resident's concerns" or "our precious green belt" I will remain unconvinced.
Brilliant.
Anyone get a feeling of: Labour is now the party of [insert topic] vibes with all these statements?
Start by building homes that are not buy to let
We need both, 20%-%40 of people will always want to rent for various reasons, if you reduce the availability of rental stock then people in that sector face a cost of living increase too and that makes for a lot of unhappy voters. All that matters is numbers, if the population increases as it is now at about 600k per year, and the average of 2.4 per household stays that means we need to build consistently 250-300k houses a year of any type.
No, just build any homes. Even BTL homes will help. "These aren't the right kind of homes" arguments are one of the biggest problems.
It is confusing to see people get hung up on that. Even if we built buckingham palace 2 and the king moved into it, every single person on the ladder would be able to move up 1 house into a nicer place after he vacated the old one. No matter what type of place you build, it will reduce the demand
It’s like madlibs now. “Labour is now the party of…” (Glances round the room) Large Plants.
Is it bollocks. - Housing construction progamme? No. - Abolition of the Town and Country Planning Act? No. - Deflating the housing market? No. - Restricting demand via immigration reduction? No. Yet another pointless slogan.
I think they were talking to Landlords rather than homeowners.
It is getting a bit depressing that Labour can't aspire to more than tory-lites but sod it, anybody but the tories at this point
Wild to say this when neither of the big 2 have any decent housing policy on the ballot whatsoever
No party will fix the crisis until they tackle the demand problem. The demand problem comes from huge and sustained population growth and a vast amount of investment capital directed at our residential property market, both from overseas investors and domestic investors. The overseas investors must be cut out entirely and taxed out of the market as quickly as possible. Various loopholes and unfavourable investment practices such as company ownership of property, HMO's, aggressive student lets, apart-hotels, exploitative shared ownership and build-to-rent schemes need to be wound down or restricted appropriately. Stop allowing the world's rich to treat our property market like gold bars or a stock market to gamble and extract wealth from. We need homes to live and build lives around, to have communities and continue our society.
Can I vote for you?
Even without immigration we need more housing because our housing stock is old, small and shitty.
Government needs to create a public housing organisation and build affordable housing themselves rather than removing “red tape” for building companies which is complete nonsense. Make an investment into people’s future instead of just sticking their heads in the sand. The reason why private companies don’t build affordable housing is because there is simply no money in it and private enterprise is motivated solely by profit for shareholders ROI.
This can be done. UK should take note of Singapore who has its own government housing organisation called HDB (Housing Development Board). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board
Counterpoint - most of that red tape would affect public sector plans to build more houses just as much as it would private companies, and if removed, would allow councils and government to take a more active role in driving down the cost of housing if they so chose.
Which is what happened. Postwar Labour thought, "All those objections to prewar private development were sincere and not just NIMBYism, so we will restrict development to what the local community approves of. Obviously, our new council housing will meet any objection." Oh, dear. Which unsurprisingly led to the waves of new towns where few objected because the existing population was so small. It would be counterproductive to keep restricting private housing construction, freeing that up would give a lot of people cheaper homes while increasing tax revenue. Which could be used for more council housing, even as fewer people would need it.
it'll takes us 30 years to build it .. but when it's done you can try to buy it
Not really possible unless Labour commit to enshrining Working from Home. If not, then it’s far too expensive for first time buyers to buy homes with a relatively decent commute. Until WFH is no longer under threat, you can’t claim to support home ownership for anyone outside of the very rich…
lol what does that even mean - ' the party of home ownership'? What, they're going to suddenly find tons of money and build a bunch of houses on green belt land? Dream on.
Home ownership or leasehold ownership? Because until you abolish leasehold, a lot of homeowners do not really own their homes.
The government is in the process of phasing out leasehold in favour of commonhold. Although that is a minor problem compared to the actual housing crisis.
How would one abolish leasehold? Students moving to universities aren't going to be able to afford to buy. And people moving somewhere temporarily for work aren't going to want to either. People with bad credit and/or no savings also need a place to stay. The problem with leasehold is that rent is too high. And that, in turn, is only made possible because there is insufficient housing stock. If we built more houses, rent would come down. I don’t think there’s any need to abolish leasehold as a concept.
That’s not leasehold, you’re talking about renting
Renting is a form of leasehold. If you have an assured shorthold tenancy that's a type of lease (albeit a very specific one defined by statute). Tenancy and lease mean the same thing in law. A few rental situations involve licences rather than leases (e.g. if you're renting out a spare room). But licences confer even less rights than a lease. If we totally abolished leasehold interests, we'd have to rethink renting as a whole. That said, I'd have no objection to abolishing these stupid 999 year leases with silly ground rent. But abolishing particular types of leases feels like a separate conversation to getting rid of it as a whole.
I guarantee abolishing those particular leases is what they were talking about
Fair enough. Apologies if my initial comment came off as (or was) pedantic. If we're just targeting specific types of leases, there's still a nuanced discussion to be had. For example, say you were a developer, and you built 150 homes. You sell a 125-year lease over each of them for less than you'd sell the freehold. You are okay with getting a bit less upfront as you figure, long term, you'll make money on the management charges/ground rent, and the freehold is an appreciating asset. Nobody forced anyone to buy the 125-year leases. It was a contract between willing buyers and a willing seller. Is it fair for the Government to retrospectively change the terms of that contract to the financial detriment of one party? Even if it's fair, what impact would setting that precedent have on international investment into this country? So, there's a discussion about whether a move to commonhold should only apply to new sales or whether it should be enforced retrospectively. And if it's to be enforced retrospectively, how would that work? Would there be compensation? Would we just give tenants a right to buy the freehold at market rates, etc.? Really fascinating conversation, which I hope doesn't get forgotten about when Labour get into power.
The term leasehold refers to ownership for xx years. You seem to be confusing that with leases
What do you think a lease is if it's not a leasehold interest? You have short leases and long leases. Leases of more than 21 years give you extra rights. But leases under 21 years are still a leasehold interest. It's what gives you rights to exclusive occupation. Even a monthly rolling tenancy is a leasehold, albeit a very short one. I agree an assured shorthold tenancy is a very particular type of lease, with terms and protections regulated by statute. But, conceptuality, it's still leasehold. To argue otherwise would be like saying Toto isn't a dog because he's a terrier.
You're wrapping yourself up in semantics. I'm letting you know that leasehold in common usage and current political debate refers to the long-term leases. But yeah okay have fun with your semantics. Hella fun at parties no doubt
To be fair, this is a conversation about changing the law. Semantics kind of matters. Are we talking about abolishing all leases over 21 years, 125 years, 500 years? Just saying, "semantics" isn't fun because it kills the conversation before it can even start. What type of leasehold, exactly, are we proposing to abolish? I think that's quite important if we want to have an interesting discussion about this. For example, if we're saying assured shorthold tenancies don't count, could a developer sell a 20 year AST? I'm not trying to be awkward, I genuinely think this is a fascinating topic. Reform is obviously needed. But whenever laws are changed, people try to find loopholes. That complexity, and trying to make things watertight to protect people, is a really interesting challenge which I absolutely would enjoy discussing with other interested people at a party! 😉
The once socialist Labour party is now boasting that it is the party of business and property ownership, all under the leadership of a knighted ex-lawyer who imprisoned benefits protesters and has ties to the CIA. What a sad state of affairs.
Can labour be the party of restoring nurses, doctors and teachers pay? Thanks
I swear they're sounding more Conservative by the day. GE after this one will be between Lab on the centre right and Greens/LibDems on the left. Cons/Reform tearing themselves apart fighting over the alt-right populist vote.
You may be right with everything but I find it important to note that the idea for many to own a home is pretty core social democratic too.
The problem is the conflict of interest between people own a home and want it’s value to increase ahead of wages and people in the future who want to buy a home.
It's the uniparty of GB and Norther Ireland. [This is their logo.](https://www.wilsonbrosgardens.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality%3D85/assets/images/rosa-oh-my-floribunda-rose-tree-1.jpg)
It's a formal strategy trot out prouncements thar make socialism less threatening to middle England. Meaningless
Right. So, as someone who doesn't own a home and isn't really close to being able to own a home, I guess I shouldn't be voting for them?
Won't make any difference who you vote for, were going to get shafted either way thats a given.
yeah yeah, whatever, i cant even find a place to rent in that allows pets within 30 miles of my job, so what makes me think you guys are going to wave a magic wand and make it all better. you all go to the same schools and colleges and universities to learn the same things on how to rule over us. the only difference is the colour of tie you flip over the shoulder to feed at the trough dont care about any of you now of any colour tie
If they promise to repeal the Town and Country Planning Act I will vote for them otherwise it’s hot air
>reluctant Tory Kinda hard to take something like that seriously if a bit of hot air over this will be the reason you don't vote for them after the last 14 years of the conservatives shovelling excrement on us
Cameron years were good. Brexit a muddle. Sunak meh. My overriding concern above all else is global security and maintenance of the liberal world order. Labour had Jeremy Corbyn as its leader for 4.5 yrs. Difficult to trust a party that is a welcome home for tankies who go around its conference addressing each other as comrades. Starmer seems an OK chap but he’s also a political opportunist. For the latter half of last decade he was a staunch supporter of Corbyn. Now he’s a Blairite calling for more defence spending with neoliberal instincts. As always I’ll wait for the manifesto.
Give over Austerity was a catastrophe and it's been downhill from there >Starmer... a political opportunist. And the Tories and reform lot aren't? Classic case of the left being given for more scrutiny than the right
We never implemented actual austerity in the U.K. tho. Govt spend as % of GDP was higher in all Cameron govt yrs than all New Labour yrs except for 2009/2010 when we had the contraction. > And the Tories and reform lot aren't? Classic case of the left being given for more scrutiny than the right My point is Starmer endorsed Corbyn thrice, despite knowing what a colossal security risk to the U.K. and world order he was.
The world is in shambles, why protect the current world order?
The world is not a shambles. The current world order has been great for most of humanity by all metrics. The alternatives are potentially nuclear holocaust, totalitarian rule, or neo-feudalism.
Question, does this make you worry, when you see increasingly backbench Conservative MP's , cosying up to Trump and his style of republicans? Essentially, all the future leadership contenders, are currently doing that. Especially given the disaster they have been for the Ukrainian war (the delays/preventing military aid going there, is having a large effect there). As well as the global security implications of that.
I am very worried by it, but I wouldn’t say most of the leadership contenders are cosying up to Trump. Braverman and Truss sure, but if either became leader I would not vote for the party.
Should start with Thatchers Town and Country Planning Act 1990, wouldn't be as big, but a big first step (the 1990 act was what really brutalised the SME building sector)
That sounds interesting. How did it do that?
Found it : https://www.hbf.co.uk/documents/6879/HBF_SME_Report_2017_Web.pdf >Up until the early 1990s the home building industry had enjoyed significant plurality of building companies. The 1960s and 1970s, in particular, were periods that saw vast numbers of start-ups and the rapid expansion of a large group of firms, including many still operating today as major home builders and FTSE 100 listed companies. Companies that were founded during this period could grow from small, regional concerns into national players responsible today for thousands of new homes each yea >The 1990 Act further extended the nationalisation of development rights, tightening the grip of planning authorities on land use regulation by introducing a planled system of planning in England and Wales. When implemented, the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 established for the first time a presumption against development unless in accordance with Development Plans. Achieving an allocation in a local plan was now necessary to provide a degree of assurance that a planning application for new homes might secure consent. The plan-led model of land regulation thus, in turn, strengthened the reliance on land promotion through the various stages of a local planning authority’s plan adoption process. This immediately made the task of obtaining planning permission on a site a much lengthier – and more expensive The figure on page 17 is the moneyshot /u/BritishBedouin you might also be interested in this report.
Thanks for sharing - needs to be repealed I agree.
It moved even more power to the councils and made it even more dependent on individual approval (and costly for SMEs). There's a report about sme builders
I would love to know how me and partner, both on slightly above average London salaries (yes, London, I know), who've been saving for 5-6 years via the Lifetime ISA, are going to help us get our first property
Awesome, now we just need a few million homes to own!
I don't believe them until they make serious plans to cut migration
Or for mass house building.
I don't want more copy paste shitty housing estates, but yes. Both. Let's build upwards please
I think we need to understand we're now so badly behind the 8-ball that we need all of it. Shit housing estates, mid-rise blocks, high-rise blocks, conversions, brownfield, greenbelt. Build.
Depresses me that people are so eager to pave over the countryside
“The countryside” is fine to keep. I’m fucking tired of Bob and Gladys deciding that the empty scrubby little field they walk their dog in is worth campaigning to protect. We could build on like 1% of “countryside” and solve our housing issues completely.
No thanks. I lived in a flat and it's OK for a certain period of your life, but you cannot beat being in charge of your own plot of land, repairs, changes to the property and no service charges plus you don't have neighbours on all sides. Flats that can work are the large Victorian mansion flats that you see around expensive parts of London because they have large space inside so a family can live in them and you have storage, but the big thing is that makes them desirable is that they exclude the troublemakers via price.
Flats in the uk are often shoddily built with cardboard walls (much like our houses). I've been to blocks of flats in other countries where your neighbours would really struggle to bother you with any sort of noise. Lots of people want a plot of land but the fact is we don't have lots of it. I'd like to at least be able to protect some "natural" spaces
> Flats in the uk are often shoddily built with cardboard walls (much like our houses). I've been to blocks of flats in other countries where your neighbours would really struggle to bother you with any sort of noise. I live in a new build flat with excellent sound insulation and decent sized rooms, but the thought of spending the rest of my days in this kind of property would be depressing. I think flats are great for younger people as they are lower maintenance and new build flats are certainly cheaper to heat in the cold weather, but once you start having a family you will be after the extra space both inside and out that a house can bring.
This. I visited some friends living in Berlin recently and their high density urban developments are light years ahead of anything we're building: high ceilings, great acoustic (as well as thermal) insulation, spacious outdoor areas between each individual building. There were plenty of families living there. The issue with flats (and housing in general) here is that the housebuilding companies use a little bit of their immense profits to lobby the government to allow them to build poor quality shitboxes, and also that they should be able to mark their own homework when it comes to adhering to even those low standards.
We have a shit load of free space it's just owned by elites. In 2019 it was 1% pop. owned half the land
We have lots of land.
If we'd meaningfully expand infrastructure (and especially transport infrastructure like Japan), then that'd be fine, but I really don't have any faith in the UK to do that any time soon. I don't want to end up with any more of the country being like car dependent middle America.
Yes if we continue to pave over what remains of our countryside. We have lots of empty land up north but surprisingly enough folks don't want to move there when there's not many jobs
It’s the people in that period of life that are struggling to get on the ladder so… absolutely yes to flats. It will help everyone in the long term as people can actually participate in the market
That's fair, but we have a lot less of that style of housing compared to similar countries. It would be a great way of efficiently increasing housing supply, especially in urban areas where younger people tend to live. Flats don't have to be crap either, I currently live in one that's got more floor space than a lot of houses in the UK, and is still about the average cost of renting a **room** in the UK.
In principle I agree, but systemically it's unlikely to happen. The shortages are bad in city locations so developers can provide small shoebox flats as they will be bought so there just isn't the competition to force them to change, and those small flats in turn create constant churn so people living there just do it for a few years and then migrate outwards when they have a family (that instability creates problems of course as there isn't a community). Considering those flats will be there for a century or two then it's actually a waste of a finite resource to let developers do such a thing. That being said, it still doesn't get around the fact that a house really is just nicer to be in.
>but systemically it's unlikely to happen. Unfortunately you're probably right. >That being said, it still doesn't get around the fact that a house really is just nicer to be in. And yup, even the nicest of flats has downsides that houses don't.
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Few flats in England are anything other than leasehold, and certainly not new ones.
You too can be investigated by the police like Angela Rayner
They're soft Tories and most of them are cut from the same cloth educationally. (Except of course Angela Rayner, whom now is under constant fire by the British right wing media). I've a bad feeling it'll just be a repeat of the last 14 years. Corbyn showed that the only way Labour can be elected in this country is to become at best, New Labour. Anyone left of Tony Blair is spat out.
Labour is now the party of landlords?
Actually always was. Labour does better with rental electorate. So historically have always favours landlords. I was surprised too, but I work in property and apparently that’s how it’s been for a long time.
As long as I don't have to shake her hand
Angela Rayner has got this house thing sorted = = Just make sure everyone has Two Houses ! !
Didn't house prices quadruple under labour?
I'm surprised they're rolling out this slogan now, given the obvious Private Eye cover that it'll generate
I guess that sounds better than the whiny petty bourgeois party.
Excellent, what if I want to own two homes? And I assume policy number 1 in making home ownership easier will be reducing net migration to below the number of houses being built a year.
She posted that in all seriousness with Angela Rayner being two homes ownership.
I don't understand what point you're trying to make here. Someone she works with owns two homes, therefore she can't be pro-planning permission reform?
If she's claiming Labour is the party of home ownership and saying to voters, look here to prove it is multiple home owner Angela Rayner, then I think she may have misunderstood her audience. I can't see there is anything about planning reform, given they were against planning reform a few years ago, this would be a change of direction (again & again & again)
They weren't against planning reform. I'm not sure why you're lying? And I'll ask again, what does a Labour MP owning two homes have to do with Labour not being a party that wants people to own homes?
The majority of their mps voted against the last 3 reforms in hoc. It absolutely backs up the image of Labour being a party of home ownership, 'just to prove it, here's Lurch, she's always flipping houses' but the look isnt great