UK Labour vows to restore housing targets to boost homeownership

UK LABOUR Party leader Keir Starmer pledged to restore mandatory home-building targets scrapped by the ruling Conservatives in December to achieve his objective of boosting the homeownership rate to 70 per cent.

To tackle the housing crisis, a Labour government would hand more power to local authorities to build 300,000 new houses each year, while first-time buyers would have priority on any new homes constructed in their areas, Starmer said in an interview with the Observer newspaper on Sunday. 

Labour would also be willing to confront local opposition to construction in many communities that’s limited the Conservative government’s ability to get new housing built during their 12 years in power, he said. 

“We also need, I think, to take on the planning laws, make sure that local authorities have greater powers to decide where the houses will be in their patch, and make sure we have the vehicles for delivery,” Starmer told Sky News in a separate interview broadcast on Sunday.

The Conservatives in a 2019 election manifesto promised to build 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s, but were already well behind that objective when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak bowed to party pressure in December and dropped mandatory building targets for local councils.

National elections are due before January 2025, with the Labour Party leading by double digits in most polls. Labour is expected to make gains among the more than 8,000 council seats up for grabs at local elections in England on Thursday. Ahead of the vote, Labour was polling at 44 per cent with the Conservatives on 26 per cent, according to a survey by Opinium published in the Guardian on Saturday. BLOOMBERG