Ping! An email lands in Steerpike’s inbox. It’s a press release about Labour’s new homes pledge, touted with much fanfare in Liverpool last week. ‘Labour will jump start planning’ it declares, ‘to build 1.5 million homes and save the dream of homeownership.’ The ‘transformational package of reforms’ includes the ‘next generation of “new towns”, new communities with beautiful homes, green spaces, reliable transport links and bustling high streets.’ All very motherhood and apple pie.
But according to an accompanying document, the new towns are not just about homeownership. Labour claim that their ‘next generation of new towns’ will be ‘attractive investment products, generating stable and diverse income streams; sales of freeholds, rental income from housing, residential and commercial ground rents and public transport fares.’ However, the recently-enacted Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act put an end to ground rents for most new long residential leasehold properties in England and Wales on 30 June 2022 and from 1 April 2023 for leases of retirement homes. Are Labour now planning to reintroduce ground rents for new leasehold properties, potentially costing homeowners hundreds of pounds a year…?
The policy also appears at odds with Starmer’s promise to end leasehold for new properties. When Sir Keir was asked on BBC Breakfast in May this year ‘Would you scrap leaseholds, would you promise that you can do that?’ He replied ‘Yeah, there were some proposals in 2020 from the Law Commission that basically said that there should be more control on existing leaseholds and we shouldn’t really be creating any new leaseholds…we would do that leasehold reform’. But it now appears new leasehold properties are a key part of Keir’s new towns.
Steerpike wonders if there’s not a touch of Gordon Brown’s much-hyped pledge to deliver ten ‘eco-towns’ in 2007, none of which were ever delivered by Labour. New towns, same old problems…
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