Minimum tenancies as well as more homes built for rent are among the main recommendations expected in the long-awaited Housing White Paper this week.
Speaking over the weekend on the BBC’s Sunday Politics, housing minister Gavin Barwell said a package of measures would be in the paper, due to be published on Tuesday.
These will aim to encourage more investment in building homes for affordable rent, which he defined as at least 20% below the market rate, with councils encouraged to get more involved.
Planning rules will be changed to enable councils to build more rental homes and the government will launch a consultation on how to encourage developers to build more affordable private rented properties. It will also announce new measures to ensure families have better access to long-term tenancies.
The last Conservative general election manifesto said “everyone who works hard should be able to own a home of their own”, and Barwell said the government was still committed to reversing the decline in home ownership. But he said the government also had to have “something to say” to renters who were facing unaffordable costs.
There are currently an estimated 4.3 million tenants in the private rental market.
“Whether you’re trying to buy or you’re trying to rent, housing in this country has become less and less affordable because for 30 or 40 years governments have not built enough homes and this White Paper is fundamentally trying to do something about that,” Barwell said.
Other areas expected to be addressed are initiatives to protect ancient woodland from being built on and also incentives for older people to downsize, possibly by changing stamp duty charges.
The move to focus on rentable homes was welcomed by Rico Wojtulewicz, policy adviser of the House Builders’ Association, which represents small and medium-sized house builders.
Wojtulewicz said that if small and medium enterprises were better enabled to build, “you get the right type of homes in the right areas”.
He said: “Concentrating too much on volume house building, as we’ve seen in the last decade, is problematic, not just for supply, but the type of supply.”
Jeremy Blackburn, head of policy at Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), said: “The private rented sector became a scapegoat under the previous Prime Minister, and because of that it suffered. We warned the Housing Minister that unless urgent action was taken there would be a 1.8 million shortfall of rental homes by 2025. It seems that now we have a listening government, with a Prime Minister and Cabinet who are willing to heed the advice of industry and take the action needed to solve Britain’s housing crisis.”
He added: “If initial reports are to be believed, the White Paper’s focus on build to rent looks set to overcome the shortfalls of previous administrations and potentially create a housing market that is genuinely affordable for all. But a word of caution, we must not forget about the individual landlords who drive the rental market. The government must also look to overturn the punitive Stamp Duty reforms that turned so many smaller landlords away from a crucial sector for our country.”
