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Social housing will be key, "affordable" is pointless if it still means houses are too expensive to buy.
Doesn't mean squat unless they stop landlords buying new builds and apartments in bulk before they are built, driving the price ot the untouched ones up.
Is the supply of new houses what is really causing the problem though? What's to say that if more planning is granted and the big builders stop land-banking, that these new houses won't just get snapped up by people who don't really need them?
...and make sure that a green belt established in the middle of the 20th century works properly for the 21st.
I sincerely hope this bit isn't code for "we're going to build houses wherever the fuck we want, to hell with your biodiversity and local wildlife".
Also a shit load more houses are only half the requirement. Those houses need to be well insulated, well built, fitted with renewable energy generation and water recycling and supported with appropriate infrastructure such as public transport and additional schools, GP surgeries etc. They also need to be fit for local purpose. Not every location needs another 'exclusive development of 4 - 5 bedroom homes', nor do they all need 5000 red brick cookie-cutter Barrett homes and flats.
You can't just brand 5 acres of shit-tier housing admist a sea of concrete and tarmac and fuck-all else as a successful job done. There needs to be more thought as to how the housing will be used and how well it integrates into the local environment and infrastructure.
It'd also be great if they made at least some effort to make them even remotely pleasant places to look at/drive through/live nearby. Green spaces, trees, water, hedges, grass, greenery. These don't only benefit wildlife they also make it nicer for people - both those living there and those living nearby. A vague attempt to match local architectural styles would help as well. Make it look like it belongs, not like someone just copy-pasted the same half-dozen house designs all across the country.
But all of these extra requirements cost money and therefore less profit for the housing developers, so I can guess the likelihood of them happening...
Nah sorry I want the UK to look like a shitty asset flip, just that one empty new build copy-pasted everywhere. "Four-bed luxury homes available now!"
My concern with this is that they have been cosying up to the likes of BlackRock so we'll see a for profit shared ownership scheme that will be just awful in practice and future governments can make it even worse.
For the private market all I want is simpler planning, a ban on building on flood plains, stricter regulations around new build sizing and construction, and taxing land banks at full value of any planning permission they hold or land value, which ever is higher.
Couple that with a mix of social housing based around council housing and not for profit social housing and we are good. However I cannot shake that they are trying to do this on the cheap up front and that costs us in the long term.