Housing

UK residential property is in short supply and this has fuelled an escalation of prices in the private sector and excessive waiting lists for social housing.
The Time Party's multi-level solution includes the regeneration of brownfield sites and streamlined planning legislation. TIME will vigorously promote a builder apprenticeship programme.

UK residential property is in short supply and this has fuelled an escalation of prices in the private sector and excessive waiting lists for social housing. The Time Party solution involves a multi-level approach:

1. Encourage the release of undeveloped urban real estate (brownfield sites)
2. Acceleration of planning permission and reform of planning legislation
3. Modular residential property structures (quick build methodology)
4. Social housing will be awarded to families and individuals residing permanently in the UK, and not promised to new arrivals

The Time Party will protect Green Belt land. We will legislate to discourage land banking. We do not support rent controls as these can lead to a reduction in the number of private rented properties on the market.

We will scrap the ‘Help-to-Buy’ (H2B) scheme. H2B schemes cause price rises which indirectly reduce the opportunity for home ownership by young citizens. The Party will impose limitations on ‘Right-to-Buy’ (R2B). Councils must replace social housing stock [1-for-1] before any R2B sale is sanctioned, which will maintain the social housing stock level. We will encourage councils to build new homes (financed by a municipal bond issue or the venture capital market) and to use the profits for further investment in housing.

We will promote full council tax being levied on empty residential property. The Party will prevent the creation of new leaseholds within the private housing market (ie: create shared-freehold entities with suitable covenants).

The Time Party will introduce legislation to ensure that only British citizens, UK permanent residents or companies controlled by same, can own more than one residential property in the UK. We will also legislate via Stamp Duty to discourage the use of British nominees, by foreign investors, to circumvent such rules.

TIME will vigorously promote and subsidise a builder apprenticeship programme to ensure that there are no skill shortages in the construction sector.

At present, the Time Party is analysing the viability of the en-bloc concept which would have three potential beneficial effects: increase residential property stock significantly; obviate the need for the development of greenbelt and/or agricultural land; ultimately induce a sustained reduction in residential property price inflation. TIME welcomes emails from supporters and members with comments on this concept and can be contacted in this regard via policy.development@timeparty.uk

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