The Bill confirmed housing as a priority for the government, and aims to make home ownership an attainable aspiration.
A Cities Devolution Bill will also deliver the Conservative manifesto pledge on transferring economic and fiscal powers to England as part of wider plans to rebalance the national economy.
The Housing Bill contains further measures to deliver an extra 200,000 new homes through the new Starter Homes initiative, which will offer a 20% discount to first-time buyers under 40.
The Bill also sets out details of more controversial measures to offer England’s 1.3 million housing association tenants the chance to buy their homes.
The Government has pledged that receipts from selling an owner’s current property will help housing associations to build replacement affordable homes on a one-for-one basis.
To fund this policy the Housing Bill will also require councils to sell their most valuable housing when it falls vacant – with the receipts used to provide new affordable homes in the same area, and the surplus used to fund the Right to Buy for housing association tenants.
Any remaining cash will be invested in a new Brownfield Regeneration Fund to increase the supply of new housing.
A new register of brownfield land will also help fast-track the construction of new homes on previously-used sites near existing communities.
A ‘Right to Build’ in the Housing Bill will also help increase housing supply and diversify the housing sector by giving people the right to be allocated land with planning permission for them to self-build or commission a local builder to build a home.
Self-build delivers a majority of homes in many other countries and can act as a boost to smaller and medium sized builders.
But the plans have been greeted with a mixed reaction.
Mark Oliver, managing director of block maker H+H said: “Instead of using tax payers’ money to build new council houses, the Government has decided to use it to increase private home ownership within the existing housing stock.”
“Since 2012 around 30,000 council houses have been transferred into private ownership with a taxpayer subsidy.
“They were supposed to have been replaced on a one for one basis, but only around 3,000 new council houses have been built during this time. That’s a ratio of 1 in 10, so why should we believe that it will be any different this time around?”
Melanie Leech, chief executive of the British Property Federation, said the new Starter Homes initiative and focus on encouraging development on brownfield land was welcome.
But she warned that these piecemeal policies would not be enough to deliver the enormous number of new homes that need to be built.
“We need decisive action and a clear vision for how government will turbo-charge housebuilding if we are to deliver the homes that future generations need.
“Last year’s Lyons Review looked at the entire planning system and came up with thoughtful and practical recommendations as to how we might increase the provision of all housing tenures, across the whole country. We would recommend that the government considers carefully the recommendations that were made in this report.
“We would also urge government to tread carefully with Right to Buy. Handled badly, it has the potential to not only exacerbate the housing crisis but to make the regeneration of our towns and cities that much harder.”
