Labour has unveiled its plans for the property market with a strong focus on social housing.
It also pledges rent controls, scrapping Right to Rent and banning discrimination against housing benefit tenants.
However, there is no mention of Stamp Duty reform in its election manifesto.
The party’s 107-page manifesto, published yesterday, dedicates four pages to housing and promises the “biggest council house building programme in a generation” with more than a million homes built over a decade.
Labour pledges to build at an annual rate of at least 150,000 council and social homes, with 100,000 of these built by councils for social rent.
A Labour government would also scrap the Conservative definition of affordable and replace it with a definition linked to local incomes.
In the rental market, Labour says it will get rid of the “discriminatory rules” of Right to Rent and will ensure people on housing benefit can’t be excluded from the private sector.
It would also give councils new powers to regulate short-term lets through companies such as Airbnb.
Renters are promised more powers through their own union and there are commitments to introduce rent controls, open-ended tenancies, new, binding minimum standards and nationwide landlord licensing coupled with tougher sanctions.
The manifesto promises to reform Help to Buy to focus it on first-time buyers on ordinary incomes and says that a Labour government would introduce a levy on overseas companies buying housing, while giving local people ‘first dibs’ on new homes built in their area.
Councils would also have powers to bring empty homes back into use and tax those left empty for more than a year.
Leaseholders would be given the right to buy their freehold at an affordable price and leasehold sales on new-builds would be banned as would unfair fees and conditions.
The manifesto backs creating a separate government department for housing and setting up a new English Sovereign Land Trust, with powers to buy land more cheaply for low-cost housing.
Developers would also face new ‘use it or lose it’ taxes on stalled housing developments.
The manifesto says: “Only Labour has a plan to fix the housing crisis.
“We will act on every front to bring the cost of housing down and standards up, so that everyone has a decent, affordable place to call home.”
A separate report – Land for the Many – published earlier this year by Labour suggested Stamp Duty Land Tax should be phased out for those buying homes to live in themselves, and Capital Gains Tax for second homes and investment properties should be increased. However, these are not mentioned in the manifesto.
Comrades trust me I know how to spend everyone else’s hard earned pennies. Disobey and we will provide free accommodation at our salt mines which includes free transport. How can you resist voting for us.
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………… commitments to introduce rent controls, open-ended tenancies, new, binding minimum standards and nationwide landlord licensing coupled with tougher sanctions.
How about tougher sanctions on rogue tenants!
Just the thing to kill off an industry. In an attempt to gain votes from tenants, they have just made the situation worse for these voters. We could see a landslide mass exodus of landlords? Certainly no incentive to grow the PRS market. This is nothing less than punitive Marxist ideology.
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You’ll only be fined if you’re not doing things as you should be, how is this a bad thing?
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The idiot left’s concept of ‘Rent Controls’ always interests me. If you force landlords to let at below the market price and they are consequently inundated with people wanting to rent their property how will they choose? Will they pick the best looking? Will they organise round-the-block races to choose the fittest? Will they run a lottery?
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Almost certainly they won’t choose the prospective tenant who is in receipt of benefits – they will go with the tenant who offers the greatest degree of financial stability ie ability to pay the rent – why would the landlord do anything else?
I suppose the landlord could select the tenant where Polly Neate/Shelter were standing as guarantors!
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More housing is needed. That is the ONLY thing I agree with from this dangerous, unbalanced loony.
Nationalising part of BT to provide free broadband to every house in the country? What in the name of all that is holy had he been smoking when he dreamed that one up?? Didn’t BT’s share price plummet after Comrade Corbyn opened his gob? And HOW can the Government be allowed to basically steal part of a company? That is dangerous territory to get into…
Rent Control? There is already rent control, its called supply and demand and market price. If people don’t want/can’t afford it, they wont pay. Simple.
Right to buy for private tenants? They already have that right, if the Landlord wants to sell and the Tenant wants to pay the price the Landlord is asking for it, possibly a bit less IF THE LANDLORD CHOOSES TO OFFER A DISCOUNT!
Right to rent is to do with the legal right to live in the country, muppet, nothing to do with housing benefit! And whilst I don’t like doing the Home Offices job for them, it isn’t the most onerous task around, just bring in your passport.
Discrimination against HB tenants can be solved in several ways. The Council pays the rent to the Landlord, on the same day each month. If the Tenant has (deliberately or otherwise) claimed too much, they discuss repayments with the Tenant, and keep the Landlord out of it. The Tenant is then responsible for making up the shortfall.
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These Clowns will bankrupt the country and leave us begging the EU cap in hand.
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