Cut council tax where homes get built, ex-minister urges

COMMUNITIES that allow large-scale building should have hundreds of pounds taken off council tax bills, a former levelling up secretary has said.

Simon Clarke told Chopper’s Politics podcast that abolishing central housing targets would mean 100,000 fewer homes would be built each year.

Michael Gove, the Levelling Up Secretary, is in talks with rebel Tory MPS about housing targets. So far 60 have signed an amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, which would bring about the abolition of mandatory, centrally set housing targets.

Mr Clarke, who ran the levelling up department for six weeks under Liz Truss between September and October, said: “I see no problem with housebuilding leading to potentially reductions in council tax in areas that are accommodated.

“When Liz [Truss] was in office it was something we were talking about – direct incentives for communities to welcome new homes. I think there’s a lot we can do around that.

“There’s a lot we can do around design codes and actually making sure that new homes are built well, rather than just the classic boxes being dumped in a field. That is all important but if we abolish all targets, which is what’s being discussed by some of my colleagues, we will, I’m afraid, end up with a Nimbys’ charter. That is the blunt reality of what that would mean.”

Mr Clarke said the numbers of new homes built would fall from 250,000 a year to 150,000 a year “were we to abolish all the targets”.

He added: “It will be an electoral suicide

‘There’s a lot we can do around design codes and making sure new homes are actually built well’

note for the Conservative Party if we continue – what we have already started to see happen in London and the wider South East – this ripple effect of people who are not voting Conservative in part at least because they can’t see any way to acquire capital in their lives.

“That is totally unsustainable for us. It is a dream for Labour.

“High prices and high rents are turning a generation of young people away from the party, which ought to be meeting their needs.”