Housing Reforms: Party Manifestos Battling it out over the Housing Crisis
It is hardly a politically radical statement to say that housing in the UK is a sorry state of affairs. Construction has failed to keep pace with growing demand. Housing quality continues to fall behind that of other nations. Rates of home ownership are declining and rental prices are skyrocketing.
Many blame the current Conservative administration for our current situation. After 14 years of government, the party has repeatedly failed to deliver on the country’s housing needs; according to estimates from the Home Builders Federation (HBF), the UK now has the lowest rate of available properties amongst OECD nations and the highest housing prices across all of Europe.
Now, with Rishi Sunak having unexpectedly called a fresh general election for July 4, political parties of all stripes are recognising that housing is one of the key issues dividing the populace and could be crucial in winning votes to their side. With party manifestos having steadily dropped over the past few weeks, we can already see each party trying to outflank one another on housing targets and policy reform.
Those of us here at Love Design Studio, and our sister company Shade the UK, are crazy about housing and are heartened to see policy reform in this area take a greater level of focus for the upcoming election. This is in no small part because housing policy in the UK directly influences the work that we do. However, with a flurry of new housing reforms in the offing and promises to boost our housing stock abound, we recognise that simply increasing the number of houses in this country is an insufficient metric for succeeding on housing; only by considering the quality, affordability, and environmental impact of housing can we holistically assess the effectiveness of reforms.
Therefore, we have taken the time to pore through each party’s manifesto to highlight the key policy pledges they have made on housing and answer questions on the likelihood of delivery of these reforms and their impacts on the environment, considering not least climate adaptation, biodiversity, net zero, and air quality.
Keir Starmer - Britain’s First YIMBY Prime Minister?
At this point in time, it seems clear to most analysts that the election is a shoo-in for the Labour party. Having consistently polled strongly for the past few years, the latest YouGov general election MRP is predicting that they will win an overwhelming 425 seats this coming July. Thus, the attention of most political pundits is turned starkly towards Keir Starmer and the pledges outlined in his manifesto, released just last Thursday.
With regards to housing, the manifesto sets out the clear ambition to Get Britain Building Again. Over the course of his premiership, Starmer has laid out ambitious plans to increase the UK’s housing stock by 300,000 new homes each year, equating to 1.5 million over the course of a 5-year term. This promise itself is encouraging, particularly as this would be approximately double the rate estimated for 2024/25, according to a recent analysis, and thus it was a welcome inclusion within the manifesto.
On top of this, the party promises to “deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation”, with the current shortage in social rented housing seen as one of the major driving forces behind the housing crisis. Whilst it is good to see this kind of commitment, the manifesto is very scant on specific details - no figure for the extent of social housing provision is included. And with Shelter recently estimating that up to 90,000 new social rent homes need to be delivered annually in England alone over a decade to make up for the shortfalls of previous governments, it is crucial that this makes up a not-insignificant proportion of new housing developments.
Labour’s approach to deliver on these promises focuses primarily on stripping out the red tape from the planning process, in order to markedly boost the supply side in the private sector, and more stringently mandating local governments to deliver housing in greater volumes.
Key policies from the Labour party include:
Reintroduce Mandatory Housing Targets: Notably watered down by the current government, the party vows to mandate that all local authorities deliver on a fixed number of new housing developments each year. Revealing that they aim to “immediately update the National Policy Planning Framework to undo damaging Conservative changes”, it is estimated this will be one of the first reforms the party introduces once in power.
A ‘Brownfield-First’ Approach to Development: Announced many months ago, Labour will continue prioritising construction on previously developed land, whilst also introducing greater scope for building on the green belt. Through freeing up areas of the so-called ‘grey belt’, meaning poorer quality green belt land such as car parks on the outskirts of cities, it is hoped that the identification and acquisition of new land for development can be expedited.
Updating Compulsory Purchase Orders: One of the major factors stymying new developments across the UK is in exorbitant land prices, severely limiting what any local administration or private developer can achieve; having to take into the ‘hope value’ of the land, overall development costs can skyrocket. Labour is aiming to reform CPOs to ensure “landowners are awarded fair compensation rather than inflated prices based on the prospect of planning permission.”
Cross-Boundary Authorities: Labour is now committed to reforming the governance of mayoral combined authorities, allowing for greater planning at the regional level. According to the Institute for Government, complex decision-making rules “hinder the ability to act” of many combined authorities. Reforming such could greatly enhance areas such as spatial planning and housebuilding.
Recruit >300 Public Planners: A key dysfunction in our planning system relates to the scrutiny and approval of new housing projects. Over the past decade, we have lost a large portion of our public planners, meaning the number of major planning cases has skyrocketed. The Labour manifesto lays out plans to recruit over 300 new planners into the system, helping the country overcome this bottleneck in housing development.
Review the Right-to-Buy Scheme: In order to limit the reduction in social housing availability, Labour is looking to review the right-to-buy scheme, which has been blamed for this country’s progressively diminishing social housing stock. Labour would review the discounts introduced in 2012 and increase protections on new social housing.
Across the sector, these have been welcomed as crucial reforms that will help decelerate the crisis in housing that has gripped this country for over a decade. However, as a number of analysts have been apt to point out, these measures have the potential to cause widespread environmental damage in what they outline. Furthermore, whilst a lack of detail in these proposals was expected from the outset, with the government in waiting possessing fewer resources to define policy positions than the incumbents, greater clarity will be required in order to understand the full environmental impact of Labour’s plans.
Take net zero, for example. A key concern that has been highlighted in the past weeks relates to the 1.5 million new houses figure - with the sheer number of developments earmarked for the next 5 years, to what extent will this increase our carbon emissions? According to Alice Moncaster, professor of sustainable construction at the University of the West of England (UWE), this would amount to approximately 60 megatonnes of upfront carbon. With UK carbon emissions for 2023 estimated to total 285.7 Mt, this would correspond to a 4% increase in carbon emissions annually, if spread over 5 years.
Again, this is where what is left out of the manifesto is crucial in terms of projecting environmental costs; with no specific measures on how to limit carbon emissions in construction, besides a vague reference to “high-quality, well-designed, and sustainable homes and creating places that increase climate resilience and promote nature recovery”, it is challenging to see how a potential Labour government could mitigate carbon emissions. What could this mean in terms of the building regulations put forward – will there be adjustments at the edges of policy, or will we see greater focus on, say modular homes and Passivhaus regulations taking centre stage?
However, one of our primary concerns relates to Starmer’s promise to ‘bulldoze through’ planning restrictions, with a whiff of this already scented in the manifesto. Essentially, we need to ask the question: In the pursuit of accelerated housing developments, to what extent will current environmental policies in housing be torn up? What does the party see as red tape, environmental policy or heritage?
Potentially the most eye-catching of these surrounds Labour’s new attitude towards the green belt. This would, of necessity, upend green belt policies, undermine environmental commitments, and likely have negative impacts on the UK’s biodiversity, which is already considered to be in a poor state. This policy is of particular importance since there is such widespread support for the green belt as is in the general UK population – according to one recent survey by Ipsos (for The Economist), 60% of people in the UK would keep current green belt policies unchanged. Despite the fact, the report writes, that much of this is based on misconceptions surrounding the extent of the UK’s land that is built on, public perceptions are nevertheless against making policy changes in this regard.
It is hoped that concerns surrounding the vulnerability of the green belt will be tempered through the introduction of Starmer’s so-called ‘golden rules’ for its development. These include taking a brownfield- and affordable housing-first approach to building on the green belt.
Supply Side Challenges - The Conservatives
The Tories released their own manifesto slightly ahead of the Labour party and they, equally, see housing as a key dividing line in the upcoming election and have drawn up a series of measures they hope will bring voters to their side.
However, whilst it may appear on the surface that the Tories are taking a very similar standpoint to their rivals on the left, deeper analysis reveals that this is certainly not the case. The headline statement on housing is that the Tories will build on their record of constructing over 1 million homes in the last parliament by delivering 1.6 million new homes over the next, should they win power. But it is not in this 100,000-home discrepancy (compared to Labour) where plans seem to diverge the most; the Tories, unlike Labour, haven’t seemed to provide a list of housing reforms that could feasibly allow them to be built. Essentially, their plans seem to focus little on the supply side of things.
Those few policies that they did outline here included:
Abolishing a ‘Legacy’ EU Law: By scrapping an EU law that demands housing developments install measures to mitigate nutrient pollution, the government estimates that it could unblock the building of 100,000 new homes.
Delivering Homes on Brownfield Sites: Through providing a fast-track route through the planning system for new homes on previously developed land in the 20 largest cities, including by forcing the London mayor to build more homes on brownfield sites, the Tories want to focus construction on densely populated cities. They also reiterated their commitment to protecting the green belt.
Unlocking New Urban Regeneration Schemes: Working in partnership with the private sector and institutional investors, the party will set up locally-led urban development corporations to support the delivery of new quarters in cities like Leeds, Liverpool, and York, as well as delivering the Cambridge 2050 plan.
Supporting Local and Smaller Builders: By requiring local councils to set aside land for smaller builders and lifting Section 106 burdens on smaller sites, the Tories aim to support more local building firms.
Ensuring Local Authorities use the Infrastructure Levy: By preventing the Infrastructure Levy, which is used to demand that developers enhance local infrastructure during housing developments, from being spent on community projects that provide no support to homes, this plan could allow more local infrastructure, like GP surgeries and roads, to feature in new developments.
The primary criticism levelled at these proposals is that they simply do not go far enough and are extremely optimistic in terms of what can be delivered based on a relatively thin parcel of policy changes. What the party does focus on, however, appears to be the demand side of the housing crisis - as part of their plan “to support first-time buyers onto the housing ladder”, the Conservatives have laid out a series of measures to drive demand in the market. Examples include cutting stamp duty, protecting family homes from higher tax rates, and launching a new Help to Buy scheme.
Each of these policies would be beneficial to first-time buyers in this country, yet analysts have been apt to point out that introducing measures that boost housing demand, yet do little to counterbalance this on the supply side, will simply result in escalating housing prices. Furthermore, with few promises on social or affordable housing included within the manifesto, besides the continuation of the Affordable Homes Programme, there are few promises to benefit those of lower socioeconomic standing. This is compounded by the fact that more social homes were lost over the last administration due to Right to Buy than were built.
Hence, with it unforeseeable that the Tories would be able to meet their new promises on housing, it is hard to conjecture what the likely impacts would be on the environment. All we can say is that if they see stripping out legacy EU environmental regulations as a way to accelerate housebuilding, then we can guess at their attitudes towards sustainable development in any future administration.
Third Parties - The Full Spectrum of Housing Pledges
When it comes to the third parties within UK politics, namely the Greens, Liberal Democrats, and Reform UK, those drawing up their respective manifestos are permitted a certain degree of political latitude; with their likelihood of entering power hardly considered reasonable by most pundits, these parties are allowed to be more idealist or blue-sky thinking in terms of their policy proposals, putting to one side concepts such as costings and feasibility.
Thus, when we look at what these parties have pledged since the election was announced, we can see a mix of it all - both fantastical promises on what can be delivered and policies highly reflective of hard-line politics.
However, there is certainly virtue in digging into what these other parties have put forward. With recent polling projections estimating that voting intentions will see a more varied mix of MPs entering parliament, with the Greens and Reform both set to win record numbers of seats and the Lib Dems looking likely to double theirs, we can see the prevailing wind moving away from two-party politics.
Coming in hottest with promises on housing reform were the Green party. Seeing as they listed this as the first section of their manifesto, “Providing Fairer, Greener Homes for All”, housing is a clear priority for the party. And other parties could be wise to look towards some of the Green policies listed, as they certainly incorporate more principles surrounding sustainability and environmental considerations than their more mainstream rivals.
The key principles that underpin Green pledges on housing surround a.) ensuring houses are built in the right place, with all new homes meeting environmental standards such as Passivhaus and include solar panels and heat pumps, b.) implementing a retrofitting programme to provide clean heat and allow existing properties to be more resilient to extreme climate conditions, c.) building / refurbishing 150,000 social homes annually and scrapping Right to Buy, and d.) boost rights for renters. All promising but, as with Labour’s manifesto, details are sparse and there is seldom little indication that their policies could meet the UK’s housing demand - the Greens haven’t even specified the number of houses they would aim to build.
When it comes to Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats, whilst their targets seem ambitious - aiming to build 1.9 million new homes over 5 years, with 150,000 annually being built for social rent - the policies outlined to deliver these targets are relatively limited and it is difficult to foresee their being effective. For instance, policies such as delivering them through new garden cities, community-led developments, and by expanding neighbourhood planning are perfectly valid, yet it is in their vagueness that they fall down.
This all said, there are key areas where the Lib Dems seem to outflank all rivals, from which any future government could take inspiration. For example, they want to include a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ stipulation when issuing planning permission to developers, meaning that permission can be rescinded if developers stall in building on the acquired land. This would promote the rapid delivery of housing developments. Furthermore, they are looking to trial Community Land Auction policies, which would allow more of the profits made from land purchases to be reinvested into local communities and infrastructure.
Strong policies, but unlikely to see the light of day.
Where to Next? Love Design Studio’s Recommendations
It seems clear that the UK will be led by a Labour government in the next parliament. Polling data currently indicates that they are likely to win by a landslide, with Ipsos showing a 42% voting intention for Labour in their most recent publication.
Therefore, despite the housing reforms they outlined in their manifesto being extremely welcomed by developers across the UK and those looking to tackle the housing crisis, we need to understand in greater depth what their plans would be to limit the environmental impacts of extensive housebuilding. Specifically, we would like to encourage them, once they enter power, to draw up plans for how to safeguard biodiversity, air quality, and carbon emissions, as well as what regulations they would implement to ensure climate resilience in all new developments.
The policy positions we would recommend they consider include:
Climate-Resilient Principles in Housing Design: Alongside current proposals around ensuring new and existing houses are well insulated and sustainably powered, we propose that all new houses be built with overheating in mind. By relying on principles such as natural cooling, ventilation, and the provision of shade, new housing developments should be resistant to extremes of both heat and cold.
Community-Wide Investment in Shading: We propose that, much like obligations under Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), it must be mandated that all new housing developments provide a certain amount of green space that has shading provision, such as tree cover and natural vegetation. This will not only boost biodiversity in an area, but will help cool the local environment and remove harmful pollutants from the atmosphere.
Green Roofs and Walls: We propose that new developments must consider all ‘wasted’ space, i.e. roofs and walls that are otherwise underutilised, for the installation of green infrastructure. This will help to regulate the ambient temperature in the local environment, for instance in how it has been shown green roofs reduce overheating in housing units beneath.
Investing in the Nation’s Transport Infrastructure: As part of wider commitments to green infrastructure, we encourage policymakers to consider changes to the design of our streets and roads. Specifically, we would like new housing developments to meet certain criteria with regards to facilitating public transport and integrating infrastructure for electric vehicles into their plans.
Focus on Retrofitting and Material Reuse: In order to diminish the amount of embodied carbon in new developments, we propose that housing developments take a retrofitting-first approach, looking to see how existing infrastructure that is underutilised could be renovated into housing, if necessary standards can be maintained on these developments. This would reduce pollution and materials consumption.
These are just some of the proposals we would recommend to an incoming government. To read more about our work, visit our website.