A Housing Bill for Everyone: For Communities

In my first blog post on the Housing Bill I wrote that young people should be able to afford to live the places in which they grew up.

Buying a place of your own helps give you a greater stake in your community. At the election I said I wanted Norwich to remain a fine city in which to live, work, bring up a family and retire. This means supporting house building, so that young people who have grown up here are able to live here and start their own families, but it also means ensuring that any developments are built with local people at heart.

Local plans ensure that local people will remain at the heart of the planning system here in Norwich. The Royal Town Planning Institute has praised the Government’s continued commitment to community involvement and the National Trust has welcomed the measures to protect our Greenbelt and prevent sprawl.

Developing on brownfield sites will protect the greenbelt and encourage urban regeneration. A statutory register of brownfield sites will make builders and local authorities more aware of the sites available for them to use. The Government has pledged to have planning permission in place on 90 per cent of brownfield sites by 2020. This will ensure more homes are delivered to meet the country’s increasing demand while ensuring that our Greenbelt remains protected.

I also think it’s vital that social housing is available for those with the greatest need. Lifetime tenancies do not take into account changes in circumstances so there are cases in which people on high incomes are still able to enjoy a subsidised rent paid for by taxpayers. The Housing Bill will ensure that people on high incomes pay a fair rent. Moreover, the Right to Buy is being extended to Housing Association properties, allowing those tenants the chance to own a home of their own just as council tenants can.