Budget 2017: Chancellor’s ambition to build 300,000 new homes per year

19 Nov Budget 2017: Chancellor’s ambition to build 300,000 new homes per year

Phillip Hammond appeared on the Andrew Marr show this morning prior to this weeks budget.  He said there will be measures in place to be announced in Wednesday’s budget speech to show how the government intend to meet a target of 300,000 new homes a year. The Chancellor suggested there will be no silver bullet to solve the housing crisis.

The shortage of housing is expected to be one of the themes of the Budget, with Mr Hammond under pressure to ease the difficulties faced by first-time buyers trying to raise a deposit.

He said it was “not acceptable” that young people find it so hard to buy a home, and promised to set out how the government would keep its “pledge to the next generation”.

No commitment was given to the £50bn reportedly being demanded by Communities Secretary Sajid Javid to finance a house-building drive, but he did commit to the target of 300,000 new homes.

Focusing on sites where planning permission has been granted, he said the government would use the “powers of state” to get “missing homes built”.

It also plans to pay to clean up polluted industrial sites for house building, get town hall bosses to allocate small pockets of land to small developers and guarantee loans by banks to small house builders.

Michael Low of TCC is hoping that the government will pledge more investment into new building methods including embracing new ‘clean-technologies’ and off-site manufacturing to help meet these targets.

More to follow….