Milton Keynes MPs and counsellors respond to the government's budget announcement
City MP Mark Lancaster has welcomed the announcement that stamp duty for first time buyers will be scrapped whereas the leader of Milton Keynes Council has said that the measures announced in the budget fail to properly address the challenges facing the people of Milton Keynes and will do little to improve the lives of residents.
The Chancellor Philip Hammond announced in today’s budget that with effect from today all first-time buyer purchases up to £300,000 would not pay any stamp duty.
In the House of Commons the Chancellor said the move would: “send a message to the next generation [owning a home] is not just a dream of your parents past but a reality of your future.”
Commenting on the announcement Milton Keynes North MP Mark Lancaster said:
“This is an incredibly bold move and will be very welcome news for first time buyers across Milton Keynes. I and other colleagues have been calling for more support for young people to get on the housing ladder so I am delighted those calls have been listened to.”
“With the different Help to Buy schemes, the Help to Buy ISA and now no stamp duty I really hope home ownership can be a reality for young people in MK.”
Peter Marland, leader of Milton Keynes Council, responded by saying, "The Conservative budget continued to promote a failed housing model with expensive subsidies to house builders and sticking plasters for a broken housing system.
Milton Keynes Council has nearly 100 people sleeping rough on the streets each night and over 700 families in temporary accommodation. The average house price is over £310,000 and the average deposit needed for a first-time buyer for a small property is nearly £50,000. Average rents are now nearly £1000 a month and the proportion of income spend on housing for low and middle incomes can be as high as half of monthly income.
The ability to own a home is a distant dream for many. Young people have little chance of getting on the housing ladder and many are even struggling to afford rent, let alone saving to buy. While abolishing Stamp Duty on property worth less than £300,000 for first time buyers is a welcome help, it is a tiny fraction of the cost of buying a house and only helps those able to buy in the first place.
The Labour-led Milton Keynes Council has consistently made the case to build a new generation of council houses, houses for rent that are genuinely affordable and a mix of housing for sale for people on all incomes. The budget failed to act on any of these in any meaningful way.
The budget failed to deal with the causes of homelessness; rising housing costs, falling wages, cuts to Local Housing Allowance, and rogue landlords offering unstable, short term tenancies."
Brian Berry, Chief Executive of the Federation of Master Builders, said “The Government has set itself a new target of building 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s. And today the Chancellor has put small and medium-sized builders at the heart of ambitious plans to tackle the growing housing crisis. The Chancellor appears to be putting his money where his mouth is with the announcement of £44 billion of capital funding, loans and guarantees. In particular, a further £1.5 billion for the Home Building Fund to be targeted specifically at SME housebuilders can play a significant role in channelling crucial funding to this sector. A £630 million fund to prepare small sites for development and proposals to require councils to deliver more new housing supply from faster-to-build smaller sites will provide opportunities to boost small scale development.”
Berry continued: “A second major challenge to getting new homes built is the skills crisis we face. In the long run, the only real solution to chronic skills shortages will be a major increase in the training of new entrants into our industry. We are therefore pleased to hear the Chancellor has today committed extra resourcing to training for construction skills. With Brexit round the corner the next few years will bring unprecedented challenges to the construction sector. The Government will need to make sure that the sector continues to have access to skilled EU workers, but we are pleased that the Chancellor has today listened to the needs of SME builders”.
