Former Secretary of State John Penrose said people should be able to add more floors to their homes to help solve the housing shortage and warned that the UK’s failure to build enough houses has led to “an increase in poverty”.
In an essay for the conservative think tank Bright Blue, exclusively provided by IThe former Northern Ireland minister warned that the country’s housing crisis has “smoldered for centuries” and that sweeping changes are needed to “surmount four or more decades of setbacks”.
MP Weston-super-Mare, who also previously served as constitutional secretary, called for a major overhaul of planning laws to allow people to add more floors to their homes to increase supply without sacrificing green space.
He praised the so-called “Street Vote” initiative, which is part of the Leveling and Redevelopment Bill currently going through Parliament and allows local communities to vote on new developments in their area.
But he added that he was concerned that while such initiatives would be a “welcome victory”, they would be “enough” to address the growing housing shortage.
The former minister said the problem is so “long-standing and ingrained” that street ballots are not “big and scary enough to shake four or more decades of bad luck.”
He said the country needed “Street Voices on Steroids” and called for a major overhaul of the planning system, which he called “Build Not Demolish,” to allow anyone in the area to add additional floors to their homes, “provided that they follow their community’s design codes.”
This expansion of planning rules is considered “greener” as existing abandoned sites will be used, and more efficient as new developments make use of existing infrastructure such as plumbing and power lines.
“It will mean that people who are struggling to own or rent will suddenly find they have a lot more choice than before. We will move from a seller’s market to a new world dominated by tenants and buyers for the first time in decades,” he added.
Under his proposal, rural areas and historic buildings would be excluded, which he predicted could lead to “a four- or five-story mansion revolution” that would “double the amount of housing available in cities.”
Mr. Penrose argued that radical changes were necessary because “housing costs became increasingly difficult to pay over the years.”
He continued: “This not only increases poverty by making the UK a less affordable place to live, especially for low-skilled and low-paid families, but also increases opportunity by reducing the ability of people of working age to risk their lives. … grab those who get in your way.”
He added that the housing crisis is “unfairly affecting poorer children” who live in rented apartments and whose educational and support networks are disrupted “more often than their wealthy classmates” as they have to move more frequently.
“[The housing crisis] means that more households live in cramped and overcrowded homes where common causes of poverty and disease, such as dampness and disease transmission, are more prevalent.”
Penrose went on to state that the lack of housing makes it “harder for young people to climb the housing ladder”, which for so long has been “a huge and important part of the dream of the Conservative Party”.
The government is under increasing pressure to build more homes after Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was accused of “ignoring the housing crisis” in his latest budget.
Critics complained that the government provided little support for private tenants and the homeless.
Several potential starters told I They were disappointed that the budget did not include new programs designed to make home buying more affordable as the government’s long-running Aid to Buy program officially ends.
Source: I News
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