House building pledges in the Green Party manifesto

Houses and flats are now sites of speculation rather than simply somewhere to call home. The Green Party wants Britain to return housing to its original purpose: providing everyone with affordable and sustainable shelter. Here’s what its manifesto says with regard to house building.

1.  Ensure that development is more evenly distributed nationwide, thus reducing pressure on the South East. It doesn’t say how this will be achieved.
   
   
   
2.  Where ever possible re-use previously developed sites that have fallen into disuse. This would reduce encroachment onto greenfield land.
   
   
   
3.  Get more homes built by small and medium sized builders and community-led cooperatives. To achieve this, the Greens would break up the “big builder cartels”, bring more transparency to the land market, transfer public land into community land trusts, and use the Custom Build model to re-parcel regeneration sites into smaller plots.
   
   
   
4.  Increase the social housing budget from £1.5Bn per year to £6Bn per year before the end of the next Parliament in order to provide 500,000 social rented home of high sustainability standards. The manifesto does not say where this extra £4.5Bn will come from but presumably tax savings and increases.
   
   
   

The Greens also plan to make property investment and speculation less attractive but that’s a whole other story…

 

See also:

House building pledges in the Labour Party manifesto

House building pledges in the UKIP Party manifesto

House building pledges in the LibDem Party manifesto

5th May 2015