A ROOF OVER YOUR HEAD

Housing is one of the most fundamental needs anybody has, and yet, over the years how often have we seen house prices boom for a year or two and then bust shortly after, creating problems for families, those seeking to buy for the first time or people wanting to move for their job? Other people may want or need to rent but regulations and red tape create conditions that stifles markets and makes potential landlords nervous about letting a property.

We can't go on like this and we need to make some changes now so that people have the opportunity they need, the social mobility they desire and a home that is within their price range in the area of the country they need to live.

Conservatives have been working hard on these issues and have a number of solutions which will help solve problems now before they become full blown crises in the future.

The first task a new Conservative Government will undertake is to put more powers back into the hands of local communities. This will see local people, by law, having a real say at the pre-planning stage of an application for a large development of housing. Conservatives would allow local councils across the country to revise their local plans to protect the Green Belt and, as I've written elsewhere on this blog, reverse the classification of gardens as brownfield sites.

The Conservatives want to see more power with local people matched by incentives for housebuilding that make sense and work with the grain of communities. Rather than Labour's top-down housing targets, Conservatives will abolish these and introduce a system of incentives to allow local councils to retain the extra Council Tax a new home creates and create new local housing trusts which will be allowed to develop homes for local people so long as there is clear community backing.

Not everyone can afford to own a home though. Some people rent their homes from a social landlord. It is important to bring opportunity to everyone and the Conservatives have proposals here as well.

To improve mobility, a 'Right to Move' scheme will be introduced to allow social housing tenants to oblige their social landlord to sell their home and to use the proceeds, less costs, to buy a home in the private sector and so bring it into the social rented sector. A national mobility scheme would be re-introduced to allow people to move between existing social rented homes and that tenants who move within the social rented sector keep their 'Right to Buy' rights.

Some social tenats though want to move into ownership over time, perhaps as their incomes or circumstances change. Conservatives will work to bring in more flexible ownership schemes to make sure that for those who see home ownership as their dream, it can become a reality, step by step.

Previous Conservative Governments have pointed the way to a property owning democracy, created the phenomenon of the sale of Council homes, and reduced the red tape on landlords by creating new kinds of tenancy which work for both the landlord and tenant. The next Conservative Government will ben o different. It will take the housing stock as it is and give more power, choice and opportunity to owners and tenants alike. A Conservative Government will create sensible incentives to build new homes where they are needed. New freedoms will be created for homeowner and tenants alike. We need to make a change soon and we will.