Housing

Housing

a place to live, a place to call home

Conservative Policy

Rewards for good tenants Rewards for good behaviour - tenants in rented social housing with a record of five years’ good tenant behaviour will be offered a share in the value their council house/social rented property. This will reward good tenants by helping them get on the housing ladder and encourage everyone to feel that where they love is their neighbour and so encourage good behaviour.
Protection of Right to Buy discounts for tenants moving from one type of council house/social rented housing to another.
Supporting the low-cost housing sector – measures will include strengthening shared ownership schemes so that those on intermediate incomes can part-own their home
The Right to Move. Allowing good council house/social housing tenants to ask their council/housing association to sell their current council/housing association house and use the proceeds to buy another property of their choice – anywhere in England. The new home will remain a state-owned property but will allow good tenants who need to move - for example for work, or to look after elderly relatives - to move in hassle free way when they need to. This will be tried out in half a dozen local authorities the hopefully spread to the rest of the country.
Stopping the government imposing housing developments in areas where local people don't want them. A future Conservative government will scrap regional planning authorities which have been used by the government to impose targets for the number of new homes in local areas This will allow local councils to decide how whether and where houses should be built.

Martin says...

* Affordable Housing.

Helping people buy their own home. The most valuable asset that most of us will ever own is the house we live in. Owning a home gives one a measure of financial security that cannot easily be gained in other ways. It is also one of the most important ways of avoiding poverty and reliance on means tested state handouts in old age. The last Conservative government helped millions of council house tenants who would not otherwise have been able to, to purchase their own home. Now, at a time when rising house prices are already making it difficult for many people to buy their own home, the Labour government has made it harder still by reducing from 35% to 25% the amount of previously paid rent that council tenants can offset against the price of their home. In a keynote speech in 2005 Gordon Brown said he wanted to create 'a home owning democracy' - adopting the phrase famously used by the last Conservative government. Yet the reality is that the tax and benefits Gordon Brown set up - with its 70% claw back in tax and benefit reductions makes it impossible for low earners to save for a deposit, together with the cutbacks in the right to buy for council tenants, have created a 'double whammy' - making it all but impossible for most low income families to ever own their own home.

Affordable housing for people in rural areas and coastal towns. This double whammy has hit people hardest in rural areas and coastal towns where house prices have been pushed up by outsiders buying second homes. In many areas this has pushed local house prices well out of the reach of young voters who have grown up in the area and work there. The Labour government often quite wrongly sees rural areas and coastal towns as relatively prosperous and so gives them significantly less funding than urban areas. However, house prices in coastal towns are rising at significantly above average rates, while homelessness in rural areas is growing three times as fast as in urban areas. In some areas this has reached crisis proportions, with nearly 90% of house purchases in areas such as Cornwall being to people from outside the area. This has led to many small coastal and rural communities slowly dying as they become deserted outside the tourist season, resulting in essential local services such as primary schools and post offices closing. I believe radical solutions are needed based on the Conservative values such as 'localism' and advocate allowing local authorities to impose a local stamp tax on the purchase of residential property that is not lived in as the owner's main residence for at least nine of the first twelve months of ownership (with proceeds going into building affordable local homes). I believe such radical measures are essential if we are to enable young local voters to own their own homes in the area where they grew up and where their family live i.e. achieving the Conservative ideal of a home owning democracy.

Access to Social Housing for local people who wait - not just for 'vulnerable priority groups'. The plight of many of those unable to afford to buy their own home has been made even worse by Labour government policy such as the Homelessness Act 2002. These have in effect forced local authorities to move vulnerable groups such as ex prisoners to the top of housing waiting lists. Consequently, many hard working honest citizens who have waited years for a council house have found themselves never getting anywhere near the top of the waiting list, because they are constantly being pushed down the waiting list by those considered 'priority groups'. Labour's housing policy may have been well intentioned, but its results are both unjust and socially dangerous. It was almost certainly one of the reasons many white working class voters in areas such as Barking and Dagenham voted for a white racist party in the May 2006 council elections, as they saw newcomers pushed to the top of council house waiting lists, while they lost out. Britain urgently needs a twin track approach to social housing. On the one hand we must be able to provide immediate housing to the most vulnerable groups in society such as 16-21 years olds leaving residential care and those fleeing genuine persecution and torture abroad. However, we also need to reserve a significant proportion of social housing for local people who don't fall into any of the government's 'especially vulnerable' categories, but have patiently waited their turn on the local housing list, often for many years.