Housing minister says government knows it can do more for sector
Housing minister Mark Prisk has hinted strongly that new measures to support the housing market will be unveiled in next week鈥檚 budget.
Prisk, speaking at the Home Builders鈥� Federation鈥檚 spring policy conference, said he was 鈥渃onfident the government could do more鈥� to help the private sector housebuilding industry construct more homes, and that the coalition government was 鈥渧ery committed to helping you do that.鈥�
鈥淲hat that [help] will be and what form that will take is an issue that it鈥檚 better I don鈥檛 paddle around in if I still want to be housing minister by the time of next week. It鈥檚 about helping thousands of people in housing need,鈥� he said.
The government has already launched a range of measures including mortgage indemnity guarantee scheme, Newbuy, the subsidising of open market sales through the FirstBuy initiative, and attempting to speed up the release of surplus public sector land.
Asked whether the government had done enough to help the housebuilding industry recover from recession, he said: 鈥淚 think we鈥檙e making progress, and broadly we have the right measures in place. Whether there鈥檚 further improvement on some of those measures we鈥檒l have to wait for the chancellor to set out. I think there are opportunities to make progress but I will allow the chancellor to make his own comments [in the budget next week].鈥�
Prisk also announced the appointment of Andrew Stanford, managing director and founder of property consultancy Stanford Mallinson, to head a task force set up to accelerate the growth of the private rented sector.
Prisk said a competition, run by the Homes and Communities Agency, to offer 拢200m to back new build private rented schemes, had been 鈥渉eavily over-subscribed.鈥�
The housing minister, who was appointed following the reshuffle in September 2012, added that the government would shortly be making an announcement on changes to the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) designed to address concerns of the industry over the scheme.
He said: 鈥淭he CIL is a challenge, it has some problems in it. My colleague [planning minister] Nick Boles is shortly to set out details of this that should help you 鈥� we鈥檙e aware of these issues.鈥�
The CIL is a charge levied by local authorities to capture the infrastructure costs associated with developments. Housebuilders have raised concerns over the level of CIL charges expected by some local authorities, and the possibility that the regulations may allow councils to charge CIL twice on the same development if changes are made to a planning application.
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