UK prime minister Theresa May has placed tackling housing shortages at the centre of her government's agenda by announcing 200,000 new discounted 'starter homes' will be delivered by 2020.
The prime minister's first two announcements of 2017 regard the building of the new houses and the development of 'garden cities' to alleviate the chronic housing shortage in England, especially in the South-East.
May will announce on Tuesday that 200,000 so-called 'starter homes' will be built between now and 2020, which will be sold at a 20% discount to market value to first-time buyers under the age of 40. The first wave of starter homes will be available later this year in 30 local authority areas, chosen because of the availability of brownfield sites which guarantee the houses can be built quickly.
The Government’s project has been criticised before it even gets off the ground: the opposition Labour party and the housing charity Shelter have said these houses cannot be described as ‘affordable’, as they cost up to £450,000 each.
Housing minister Gavin Barwell said the houses will be 'decent, well-built homes with gardens' and that their cost will be capped at £250,000 outside London and £450,000 in the capital. Buyers who receive a discount will be prevented from selling them for five years.
The government has also announced the development of 14 brand new garden towns and villages across England, to be built just outside existing settlements. Some towns will have more than 10,000 houses each, while some villages will have as few as 1,500, depending on local need. A total of 200,000 new homes will be built, all with green spaces and good transport links.
The garden city scheme announced on Monday is a scaled-down version of previous Government plans, which had met with fierce local opposition from resident groups worried about destruction of the green belt around cities and added pressure on infrastructure. After extensive consultation, the projects that are going ahead have local support.
‘Locally-led garden towns and villages have enormous potential to deliver the homes that communities need, Barwell said. 'New communities not only deliver homes, they also bring new jobs and facilities and a big boost to local economies.'
Sir Ebenezer Howard had founded the garden cities movement in 1898, as a healthy and people-friendly alternative to industrial slums with no green spaces. The new garden cities will be the first to be built in England in over a hundred years.
