Labour's Programme on Housing

The LRC is publishing extracts from Labour’s 2019 Manifesto It’s time for real change. We hope this will encourage everyone to look in more detail at the manifesto as a whole. It is available at https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/

Labour has pledged to spend £75 billion on affordable housing over five years

Everyone has the right to a decent, secure home. In 1945, Labour promised to ‘proceed with a housing programme with the maximum practical speed until every family in this island has a good standard of accommodation’. In 2019, we renew that pledge. 

But too many people are being denied their right to a good home by our housing system that treats homes as financial assets rather than places to live.

There is no starker symbol of the failing housing system than the horror of the Grenfell Tower fire.

A Labour government will bring system-wide change, so that a tragedy like Grenfell never happens again. We will introduce a £1 billion Fire Safety Fund to fit sprinklers and other fire safety measures in all high- rise council and housing association tower blocks, enforce the replacement of dangerous Grenfell- style cladding on all high-rise homes and buildings, while introducing mandatory building standards and guidance, inspected and enforced by fully trained Fire and Rescue Service fire safety officers.

Grenfell Tower was the confirmation of a more far- reaching crisis. Everyone knows of someone affected by the housing crisis: younger people unable to buy a first home, renters trapped in damp flats, families stuck on council waiting lists, leasehold home-owners hit by unfair fees, people who are homeless living and dying on our streets. The gap between the housing haves and have-nots is at the heart of the injustice in our country today.

Since 2010, the Conservatives have slashed funding for new homes, refused to regulate for higher standards and given a free hand to commercial property developers. There are fewer new homes for social rent, a million more households stuck renting from a private landlord, 900,000 fewer young people owning a home and more than twice as many people sleeping on our streets.

Council and Social Homes

The only way to deliver on everyone’s right to a good home is to build publicly funded social housing.

Labour will deliver a new social housebuilding programme of more than a million homes over a decade, with council housing at its heart. By the end of the Parliament we will be building at an annual rate of at least 150,000 council and social homes, with 100,000 of these built by councils for social rent in the biggest council housebuilding programme in more than a generation. We will establish a new duty on councils to plan and build these homes in their area, and fund them to do so, with backing from national government.

We will scrap the Conservatives’ bogus definition of ‘affordable’, set as high as 80% of market rents, and replace it with a definition linked to local incomes. These council and housing association homes will be more affordable than market housing and built to higher standards. We will end the conversion of office blocks to homes that sidestep planning permission through ‘permitted development’.

We will stop the haemorrhage of low- cost homes by ending the right to buy, along with the forced conversion of social rented homes to so-called ‘affordable rent’. We will review the case for reducing the amount of housing debt councils currently hold. And we will give councils the powers and funding to buy back homes from private landlords.

Home Ownership

Under the Tories, home ownership is getting further out of reach for more and more people. Numbers of new affordable homes to buy have fallen, and fewer younger people can afford their own home. We will build more low-cost homes reserved for first-time buyers in every area, including Labour’s new discount homes with prices linked to local incomes.

We will reform Help to Buy to focus it on first-time buyers on ordinary incomes. We will introduce a levy on overseas companies buying housing, while giving local people ‘first dibs’ on new homes built in their area. We will bring empty homes back into use by giving councils new powers to tax properties empty for over a year.

Labour will end the scandal of leasehold for the millions who have bought their home but don’t feel like they own it.

We will end the sale of new leasehold properties, abolish unfair fees and conditions, and give leaseholders the right to buy their freehold at a price they can afford. We will introduce equivalent rights for freeholders on privately owned estates.

Private Renters

More than 11 million people rent from a private landlord and many of them are at the sharp end of the housing crisis. We will take urgent action to protect private renters through rent controls, open-ended tenancies, and new, binding minimum standards.

Labour will stop runaway rents by capping them with inflation, and give cities powers to cap rents further.

We will give renters the security they need to make their rented housing a home, with new open-ended tenancies to stop unfair, ‘no fault’ evictions. We will make sure every property is up to scratch with new minimum standards, enforced through nationwide licensing and tougher sanctions for landlords who flout the rules. We will fund new renters’ unions in every part of the country – to allow renters to organise and defend their rights.

We will get rid of the discriminatory rules that require landlords to check people’s immigration status or that allow them to exclude people on housing benefit. We will give councils new powers to regulate short-term lets through companies such as Airbnb.

Homelessness

No one should sleep without a roof over their head in one of the richest countries in the world. But under the Tories, the number of people sleeping rough has more than doubled.

Over 125,000 children are now living in temporary accommodation, without a home to call their own – or the space they need to thrive. Labour will tackle the root causes of rising homelessness with more affordable homes and stronger rights for renters.

Labour will end rough sleeping within five years, with a national plan driven by a prime minister-led taskforce. We will expand and upgrade hostels, turning them into places where people can turn their lives around. We will make available 8,000 additional homes for people with a history of rough sleeping. We will tackle the wider causes of homelessness, raising the Local Housing Allowance in line with the 30th percentile of local rents, and earmarking an additional £1 billion a year for councils’ homelessness services.