thetorydiary

Grant Shapps, the shadow housing minister is  off to Cornwall today - a Tory/Lib Dem battleground county at the next election where the Lib Dems defend all six seats, most of which are pretty high on the Tory target list.

Mr Shapps will be there to announce a policy seeking to address the problem of local people being priced out of the housing market in rural areas.

According to today's Daily Telegraph:

Under the Tory plans, local authorities will be asked to set up a register of families who want to join a self-build scheme. The council will then assess how much land needs to be put aside for a self-build community to be set up. Grant Shapps, the shadow housing minister, said he wants to tap into the vast number of people who are now willing to build their own homes.

He said: “Whilst house-building in general has been suffering, the self-build community has been growing. Most people will be surprised to learn that last year the second largest home builder wasn’t one of the big household names, but an army of individuals who call themselves self-builders.

“Across the country they’re creating affordable homes in the very places where young families struggle with sky high house prices. Under the next Conservative Government there will be an unprecedented shift in power back into the hands of local people.“

“We want to see a self-build movement spread across the country and particularly come to the rescue in rural areas. Local authorities will use the assessment of interest in self-build to help kick-start this rural housing revolution.”

This comes on a day when the Housing minister, John Healey, has said that he is not worried about the fact that fewer people are now unable to afford to become home owners. Read about his lecture to the Fabian Society in today's Independent.

Jonathan Isaby

YIMBYs being Yes, In My Back Yard!

In a speech to the IPPR Shadow Housing Minister Grant Shapps MP said that not-in-my-backyard attitudes to new development were perfectly rational so long as there were no benefits to local communities:

"Extra homes require additional services and councils have to pick up the tab. Now of course, new Council Tax can be collected from each additional household, yet the mind-blowing complexity which is local government finance may mean that an area is actually worse off once the homes have been built. So let's see... More people... a loss of space and amenity... oh, and you may pay more, just for the pleasure. And they wonder why people object!"

Mr Shapps proposes a host of incentives to encourage local communities to accept new builds:

"A future Conservative Government will match pound-for-pound the Council Tax revenue received on all new homes for a period of six years. And in order to help fix Labour's affordable housing crisis, we will guarantee 125 pence for every pound received in Council Tax from new social homes... again in addition to the money already collected."

Using his own experience Mr Shapps calculates that a new development of 10,000 homes would bring new matched funding of £100m.  He proposes reforms to the planning system to ensure that communities will have a transparent say in how that extra funding is used.

Today's Times quotes industry sources who are sceptical about this "incentivised localism". Read Grant Shapps' full speech.

Tim Montgomerie

> 12.45pm Lawrence Kay on CentreRight highlights Policy Exchange's success in moving Tory policy on housing

Grant Shapps, the shadow housing spokesman, is suggesting today that Gordon Brown's announcement yesterday that local people who have been waiting a long time for a council house will be moved to the front of the queue falls foul of the government's own equality legislation.

According to his understanding of the law:

Councils will also still have a duty under existing legislation to give 'reasonable preference' to the homeless, those in overcrowded or unsatisfactory housing, and those with medical or welfare problems.

Jonathan Isaby

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