£45M funding package to free up land for thousands of new homes

Housing and Planning Minister Dominic Raab has unveiled a £45M funding package to help stimulate key community projects and create thousands of new homes.

In allocating this considerable sum, central government hopes to prop up Britain’s beleaguered housebuilding industry. The funding package is to be divvied up between 79 separate projects spanning Newcastle to Plymouth, and facilitate construction of 7,280 new homes on council owned land.

The hope now is that local authorities will be able to unlock space enough to accommodate some 160,000 homes by 2020, drawing on Land Release Fund investment to bypass potential pitfalls that would render otherwise viable land unusable. This might extend to necessities such as asbestos removal and bat alleviation or quality of life improvements – the relocation of a pelican crossing, for instance.

These new measures follow the first round of investment from the £5Bn Housing Infrastructure Fund, which looks to kick-start construction of 200,000 new homes nationwide. According to central government sources, the Housing Infrastructure Fund forms part of a “comprehensive strategy of planning reform and targeted investment to build 300,000 homes a year”.

“We are investing £45 million to build roads and provide utilities, so councils can release the land to get up to 7,280 new homes built,” said Minister Raab.

“It’s part of our strategy to build the homes Britain needs, and carry local communities with us. We’re determined to make buying or renting more affordable for young families and those on low or middle incomes.”

The outcome of these good intentions remains to be seen. But with Brexit looming large on the horizon and the construction sector in the grip of an unprecedented skills shortage, there’s little or no margin for error.

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