Private rented homes will have to meet minimum energy efficiency standards by 2030 if Labour get the keys to Number 10 next month.
Launching their manifesto, Sir Keir Starmer announced the policy – which doesn’t specify what EPC band properties would need to reach – as part of their Warm Homes Plan, offering grants and low interest loans to support investment in green initiatives. The party will work with both councils and the private sector to provide more funding to accelerate home upgrades and low carbon heating.
It has also promised an immediate end to Section 21 evictions and the feudal leasehold system, announcing an overhaul of PRS regulation which would empower tenants to challenge unreasonable rent increases and to extend Awaab’s Law.
Labour would review how to better protect leaseholders from costs around building safety and enact the package of Law Commission proposals on leasehold enfranchisement, right to manage and commonhold. It would take further steps to ban new leasehold flats and ensure commonhold was the default tenure.
The party vowed to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation, ensuring that new developments provided more affordable homes by supporting councils and housing associations to build capacity. Labour will fund extra planning officers by increasing the rate of the stamp duty surcharge paid by non-UK residents and build a new generation of new towns.
Working with local councils, first-time buyers would have the first chance to buy homes instead of entire developments being sold off to international investors, while a permanent, comprehensive mortgage guarantee scheme would support first-time buyers.
NRLA chief executive Ben Beadle (pictured right) agrees with the shadow housing minister who has argued that ‘landlords need robust grounds for possessions in legitimate circumstances, and they need the system to operate quickly when they do.’
He adds: “We stand ready to work constructively with a potential Labour Government to achieve this and ensure a smooth transition to the new system. This needs to include giving the sector time to properly prepare for it.”
Dan Wilson Craw, deputy chief executive of Generation Rent (pictured right), says: “It is good that the manifesto recognises the various other ways renting isn’t working, including discrimination, exploitation, poor standards and rent increases, but we have little detail of what action the party would take. Too many tenants are forced out of their home by unaffordable rent rises so any new protections must help tenants stay put, rather than continue to allow landlords to push rents up faster than tenants’ wages.”
Tags:
Comments