Housing Body Calls on Burnham to Consider Industry Funded Support for First Time Buyers

The Housing Forum is calling on the new Burnham administration to introduce a new model of first-time buyer support, funded by industry.

This is the first of five proposals, which are not publicly funded, set out by the Forum as ways that Government could help the housing sector to increase housing supply, address need and improve quality.

Director of Policy and Public Affairs, Anna Clarke, said: “We know that targeted support for first time buyers purchasing newbuild homes has minimal impact on prices of other homes, but can play a vital role in keeping housebuilding going during downturns in the housing market cycle. There are various models being explored whereby housebuilders could pay to give buyers access to interest-free equity loans. We believe the Government and National Housing Bank should work with us and others across the sector to develop these models and get the homes we need built.”

The other four ‘taxpayer cost-free’ solutions proposed by The Housing Forum in Housing Solutions: Practical insights from the housing sector are:

• Ensuring that listening to the voices of those who need housing is a mandated part of the planning process.
• Counting people not ‘units’ when building new social homes, to encourage building family-sized homes.
• Both supporting and requiring planning authorities to deliver to speed up decisions
• Increasing the income limits for shared ownership – frozen for a decade – in line with inflation.

Support for First Time Buyers

The publication also sets out the most effective ways government could spend money to support new housing, which include:

• A time-limited market stimulus to get the market moving, such as a stamp duty holiday.
• Postponing the Building Safety Levy until October 2028 to allow the sector to recover housebuilding rates first.
• Low-cost borrowing for councils.
• Removing VAT from all types of retrofitting undertaken by social landlords.

Housing Solutions also sets out ways in which the housing sector should itself work together to increase supply and quality. In the long-term it recommends that government sets up a new Housing Delivery Unit for better coordination of the housing ecosystem, supporting the social housing sector with long-term and flexible funding streams.

Chair of the Board, Jamie Ratcliff, said: “Our members at The Housing Forum come from across the whole of the housing and construction sector and have a wealth of expertise. We collectively have much to offer and in with the right policy environment in place could achieve great things working with Andy Burnham and his team over the coming months and years. Together we can find ways to deliver on their own ambition and ours to increase the supply of new homes across all tenures and parts of the UK.”

The Housing Forum is the cross-sector membership network for housing and construction with 150 member organisations from across the whole of the housing sector and supply chain, including councils, housing associations, housebuilders, construction companies and architects.

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