Government unveils £5bn boost to speed up house building

The Government is pledging £5bn of public money to accelerate building of tens of thousands of homes.

Under the latest plan to galvanise the house building industry, ministers will set aside £2bn of new public borrowing to fund an Accelerated Construction Scheme to make public land with planning permission available to builders.

A further £3bn home building fund using previously-announced cash will provide loans to stimulate new building projects where finances are tight.

Builders will be encouraged through these funding pots to use more modern building techniques in the hope of delivering homes twice as quickly.

Also new rules will be introduced to make it easier for developers to demolish offices and replace them with residential housing on a like-for-like basis.

Local planning authorities will be able to grant permission in principle on sites identified in new brownfield registers, to take the risk out of developing a potential 140,000 homes a year.

Chancellor Philip Hammond and Communities Secretary Sajid Javid will set out details of the funds at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham today.

“We’ll use all the tools at our disposal to accelerate housebuilding and ensure that over time, housing becomes more affordable,” Hammond said in a statement before his speech to the conference.

The home building fund will release £1bn of short-term loans for small builders, custom builders and innovative developers to deliver 25,500 homes by 2020, while a further £2bn of long-term funding for infrastructure will unlock up to 200,000 homes over the longer term, they said.

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