It seems like every UK Prime Minister wants to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the thirty second president of the United States Franklin Roosevelt. A new Prime Minister means another New Deal.
Back in 1997 it was Tony Blair with a policy designed to retrain a quarter of a million people. This was then refitted later by Gordon Brown and launched again. Into the naughties and the New Deal was back, rebranded by Jeremy Corbyn as the Green New Deal. Now Boris wants in and so we have “a New Deal for Britain” launched symbolically in the West Midlands town of Dudley all part of the ‘levelling up’ agenda and boosting the green economy.
The speech has set in motion a series of initiatives and has committed Government to a National Infrastructure Strategy to be published in the autumn – will it include housing? There was an announcement of £5bn of capital investment projects spanning hospitals, schools, shovel ready local projects, digital upgrades and new roads. You wonder where the Civil Servants will get the time. After all aren’t they meant to be still battling Covid and negotiating a trade deal with the world post-Brexit!
Planning got a big mention and is firmly in the crosshairs but we already knew that. The announcements made today around this are really nothing new. The changes to permitted development have been kicking around for some time. More importantly the supposedly radical planning reform paper is yet to make an appearance, it’s now billed for July. We shall see what comes of this but I suspect there is still a fair bit of back and forth in Whitehall as to what the final form will take.
The Government’s First Homes agenda (covered in this earlier post) got a look in with money earmarked to fund a pilot for 1,500 homes. Presumably this will be the Government re-purposing existing homes into this program and could mean buying stock from developers.
Looking ahead, July is set to be a big month for property watchers.
