Tories Plan to Build 300,000 New Homes by Mid-2020

The Conservative party, who had a strong win in the December election last year, have made promises to tackle the country’s housing crises; claiming in their 2019 manifesto that they are committed to building 300,000 new homes a year, and to achieve this by mid-2020. In addition to this, a target has also been set by the party for 2025, this being to add 1 million new-builds to the UK’s housing stock.

The UK’s housing crisis is one of the country’s major concerns, with figures from last year’s National Housing Federation “state of the nation” reporting that over 8 million people across the country are affected.

The Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation, Kate Henderson, has commented on these results, stating that:

“This crisis cannot be solved by tweaks around the edges of the housing market. What we need is a return to proper funding for social housing, to the levels last seen under Churchill. Investing in housing is a win-win for the Government – it would bring down the housing benefit bill, provide everyone with a secure and stable start in life, and kick start an economic boom creating thousands of jobs.”

CEO and co-founder of Magnet Capital, Ashley Ilsen, has also commented on the UK’s housing crisis, stating the following on the matter:

“Access to finance is just one of many supply side areas that need urgent improvement if we are going to help increase the amount of new housing we are adding to the existing stock. As a specialist development finance lender we consistently hear the same complaints about a lack of quick and flexible funding and I hasten to add that there are still plenty of lenders operating in the development finance sector that don’t have the required expertise.”

“Aside from this I believe the main area where we can improve the supply of new housing stock is the current planning system. Our current planning system is arguably dated and not fit to handle the increasing demand that we need to fill for new homes.”

“My previous conversations with government bodies about the planning system have inevitably proved to be unsuccessful and I have found that this has mainly been down to an unwillingness to change. Dramatic change to the ways, and more importantly timescales, that developers are able to obtain planning would no doubt improve the current state of play and this ties in closely to how us as funders can deploy our capital.”