Responding to the Autumn Statement last month, Mark Littlewood, director general at the IEA, slammed the chancellor’s failure to address the source of the housing crisis.
Mark’s comments followed the news that the government would launch a £2.3bn housing infrastructure fund to deliver up to 100,000 homes.
“Instead of making artificial changes that skirt around the problems of the housing crisis, the government should be improving affordability by allowing the construction of more houses,” Mark suggested.
“Instead of pumping public money we don’t have into housebuilding, the government should liberalise planning regulations to free up land for building.”
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Defence released 13 sites for the purpose of building thousands of new homes.
In November, housing minister Gavin Barwell revealed that the government plans to expand permitted development rights for office-to-residential conversion.
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