Corbyn housing policies may indicate future policy debate, expert says

Corbyn issued a housing policy document last month with a particular focus on increasing the number of council houses being built and reducing the costs of buying and renting homes. The document also contained proposals to disapply permitted development rights and to speed up the rate at which developers bring forward land they own for development.

The document said more than 240,000 homes needed to be built in the country each year and that at least half of these should be council houses. It said councils should be allowed to borrow more money to build homes and that a National Investment Bank should be set up to support house building by local authorities and by private developers offering a high enough proportion of "genuinely affordable housing".

The proposals included the power for councils in areas of high housing stress to suspend the right for tenants to buy their homes at a discount, the potential reduction of the discount offered under the right-to-buy and measures to ensure that receipts from the scheme remained within the area and that "genuine replacements are built".

The document also indicated opposition to the "damaging and reckless" government policy of forcing councils to sell high value council houses, which it said allowed investors and speculators to buy the homes whilst residents were forced into other areas increasing pressure on privately-rented homes there.

Several policies sought to address the issue of 'land banking' by developers. The document said the introduction of a land value tax on undeveloped land with planning permission should be considered along with "'use it or lose it' measures on other brownfield sites" and powers for councils to compulsorily purchase sites that were not being developed by their owners.

The document said permitted development rights, allowing certain types of development to go ahead without full planning permission, prevented provision of required facilities and infrastructure and "must be reversed". It said the government's policy of selling public land for development risked being used to raise funds without providing affordable homes and that public land should instead be transferred to councils to build homes.

The policies also included setting national limits on private rent rises, linking rents to local average earnings, restricting subsidies to buy-to-let landlords and allowing councils to levy higher taxes on properties left empty or even to ban ownership by non-UK based entities.

Planning expert Lucy Close of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com said: "Whilst Corbyn's potential to win the next UK general election in 2020 is unknown, his housing policies indicate the Labour Party's likely position in housing policy debates in parliament in the shorter term. This will of course have an impact on UK planning policy as the Conservative government will adapt their agenda and policies in order to respond to Corbyn’s ideas and criticisms. We should therefore expect for Corbyn’s approach to have an impact on housing policy."

"It is also interesting to note that these housing policies echo the sentiments of the Lyons Housing Commission report which was published last year, so we have seen some of these ideas before," said Close. "In any event, the popular view will be that Corbyn’s approach is a radical one and developments in policy will be watched carefully by the property industry."