“On top of this, there are other tax freezes and temporary cuts due to come to an end that Labour hasn’t pledged to extend, including the 5p cut in fuel duty and the stamp duty holiday set to end next March.”
Housing
Speaking on Labour’s announced house building targets, Abrdn political economist, Lizzy Galbraith, said: “Planning reform is clearly a key part of Labour’s growth strategy.
“We’ve already heard that they intend to focus on planning reform in their first 100 days in office, with a pledge to build 1.5mn homes over the next parliament.
Galbraith also mentioned that Labour have a “potential view” to redesignate greenbelt areas to facilitate such developments, as well as overruling councils deemed to be persistently blocking new developments.
She described these housing targets as “very ambitious, even with planning reform” and so stated that it will be “interesting” to see if such a target will be made mandatory.
The Labour party also announced support for renters, joining other major parties in pledging to abolish no-fault evictions should they form the next government.
This was received positively by industry experts but National Residential Landlords Association chief executive, Ben Beadle cautioned that work needs to be done to ensure the smoothness of this transition.
“What matters is ensuring the replacement system works, and is fair, to both renters and responsible landlords,” he explained.
“Given this, we agree with the shadow housing minister who has argued that ‘landlords need robust grounds for possessions in legitimate circumstances, and they need the system to operate quickly when they do’.”
tom.dunstan@ft.com
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