London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 02, 2025

Labour and Tories push rival housing policies

Labour and Tories push rival housing policies

Labour and the Conservatives will later set out rival plans to tackle England's housing shortage.
Jeremy Corbyn will promise the biggest affordable house building programme since the 1960s, including 100,000 new council houses a year by 2024.

Boris Johnson will announce measures to help first-time buyers and boost private house building, promising a million homes over the next five years.

The announcements come ahead of Labour's manifesto launch on Thursday.

Labour's £75bn plans will be paid for using half of its £150bn Social Transformation Fund - a pot it says it will use to "repair the social fabric" in the country, if they win a majority in 12 December's general election.

The council house pledge means the homes will be built and run by local authorities, and paid for out of the public purse - with rent returning to the councils.

Mr Corbyn will also promise 50,000 "genuinely affordable homes" a year to be offered through Housing Associations - scrapping the current definition of affordable and replacing it with one linked to local incomes.

Housing Associations are not-for-profit organisations which put any money made through rent back into the maintenance and building of new houses, and can be subsidised by the government.

Homes run by these groups fall under the umbrella term of "social housing", along with council homes.

Labour says its plan will be the biggest council and social housing programme in decades - a repeat of the pledge it made at the 2017 general election.

"Housing should be for the many, not a speculation opportunity for dodgy landlords and the wealthy few," Mr Corbyn will say.

"I am determined to create a society where working class communities and young people have access to affordable, good quality council and social homes."

Housing charity Shelter welcomed the Labour proposals.

Chief executive Polly Neate said: "Labour's plan would be transformational for housing in this country.

"A pledge to build social homes at this scale would, if implemented, do more than any other single measure to end the housing emergency and give new, affordable, safe homes to hundreds of thousands currently without one."

Labour is promising to be building a very large number of homes in England in five years.

In 2017, they promised 100,000 council or housing association homes a year. Now it's 150,000 between them.

You have to go back over 40 years to find more than 100,000 council homes being built in a year, while housing associations have never managed to build as many as 50,000 homes in a year.

It has been unusual recently to see 150,000 new homes being built in a year by anybody, let alone just by local authorities and housing associations.

There has already been talk of skills shortages in the construction sector, so there is going to have to be a great deal of training or a lot of construction workers being attracted from overseas if this target is going to be met.

The Conservatives will also announce a number of policies alongside their million homes pledge, which includes an overhaul of the planning system.

A future Tory government would not use public money to build the houses, but pursue policies that they believe will encourage the private sector to build more.

The party will promise to introduce a new mortgage with long-term fixed rates, and only needing a 5% deposit, to help renters buy their first homes.

And it will create a scheme where local first-time buyers will be able to get a 30% discount on new homes in their area.

"The Conservatives have always been the party of homeownership, but under a Conservative majority government in 2020 we can and will do even more to ensure everyone can get on and realise their dream of owning their home," said Mr Johnson.

"At the moment renting a property can also be an uncertain and unsettling business, and the costs of deposits make it harder to move. We are going to fix that."

BBC economics correspondent Dharshini David said the relaxing of affordability rules for mortgage borrowers could be controversial.

The Bank of England considered when it might be appropriate to relax this recently and concluded it should only do so if first-time buyers were being deterred by prices rising faster than they are now.

So a strategy of less cautious lending could put the government on a collision course with the Bank of England, added our correspondent.

On Wednesday, the Liberal Democrats launched their manifesto, promising to build 300,000 homes a year by 2024, including 100,000 social homes.

The Green Party also announced in their manifesto they want to build an extra 100,000 council houses a year.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
Nvidia Pledges Up to $100 Billion Investment in OpenAI to Power Massive AI Data Center Build-Out
U.S. Signals ‘Large and Forceful’ Support for Argentina Amid Market Turmoil
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
Vietnam Faces Up to $25 Billion Export Loss as U.S. Tariffs Bite
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Indonesia Court Upholds Military Law Amid Concerns Over Expanded Civilian Role
Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch Join Trump-Backed Bid to Take Over TikTok
Trump and Musk Reunite Publicly for First Time Since Fallout at Kirk Memorial
Vietnam Closes 86 Million Untouched Bank Accounts Over Biometric ID Rules
×