Throughout
the Boris Johnson-led government of 2019 to mid-2022 Sunak fell in line over
the Renters Reform Bill and Fairer Private Rented Sector White Paper; he made
few comments explicitly about landlords or tenants, save to support the general
thrust of recent reforms and also backing the successive eviction bans during
the Covid period.
It is expected that he will continue with the
long-standing Conservative commitment to scrap Section 21 powers.
In August Sunak said he wanted today’s renters,
along with young adults obliged to live at home with their parents, to become
capitalists - and that meant getting their hands on capital in the form of home
ownership.
He told Sky News in one interview: “We are the
standard bearers for capitalism. But we can't expect future generations to
share our belief in capitalism if they can't get their hands on capital. That's
why I'll do whatever it takes to build affordable, plentiful housing, building
the next generation of Conservative voters.”
More broadly on housing, the former Chancellor said
he wanted developers to finish a project before they are granted new planning
permission for other plots in the same local area, while local authorities
having greater compulsory purchase powers to buy undeveloped land at a discount
if it has not been built on within an agreed time frame.
To avoid existing communities having too many new
homes without appropriate local facilities, he also pledged a new
'infrastructure first guarantee', which aims to ensure all new homes are
supported by enough local doctors, schools and roads.
Sunak’s most explicit expression of housing policies
was set out in a written response to questions from the Housing Today
publication. In that response he said he was against the previous Tory
manifesto commitment to build 300,000 homes a year in England, because he now
rejected “arbitrary top-down numbers”.
Instead
his team said: “Rishi does not believe in arbitrary, top down numbers. What
matters is helping councils to get local plans in place more quickly to deliver
beautiful homes, which communities can support.”
The statement added Sunak wanted to introduce
reforms to tackle land banking, remove barriers for small builders and deliver
more homes through modern methods of construction. He also plans to
implement a “balanced approach” to planning fees, which his team said will
provide funding certainly for planning departments but also not “place
disproportionate burdens on smaller developers”.
Letting Agent
Today
Graham Norwood
24th October
2022