2017 General Election manifestos

With the General Election on 8th June 2017 fast approaching, we have had a look at the main parties' manifestos and extracted the key points and proposals that relate to construction, infrastructure and the built environment.

[edit] Conservatives

[edit] Planning

• Plant 1 million more trees in towns and cities.
• Review the design of government buildings, to ensure they make a positive contribution to the local area.
• Maintain existing protections on designated land such as the green belt, National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
• Reform compulsory purchase orders to make them easier and less expensive for councils to use, and make it easier to determine the true market value of sites.
• Continue the £2.5 billion flood defence programme.

[edit] Housing

• Meet the 2015 commitment to deliver a million homes by the end of 2020 and deliver half a million more by the end of 2022 (including 160,000 on government-owned land).
• Deliver the reforms proposed in the Housing White Paper to free up more land for new homes, speed up build-out by encouraging modern methods of construction, and give councils powers to intervene where developers do not act on planning permissions.
• Support high-quality, high-density housing such as mansion blocks, mews houses and terraced streets.
• Enter into new council housing deals with local authorities to help them build more social housing, providing them with significant low-cost capital funding.
• Build new fixed-term social houses, to be sold privately after 10-15 years with an automatic right to buy for tenants, the proceeds of which will be recycled into more new homes.
• Give greater flexibility to housing associations to increase their housing stock.

[edit] Industrial strategy

• Encourage and promote the use of shale gas fracking.
• A new £23 billion National Productivity Investment Fund targeted at housing, research and development, economic infrastructure and skills. This will include; £740 million of digital infrastructure investment; 'The largest investment in railways since Victorian times'; £1.1 billion to improve local transport; £250 million in skills by the end of 2020.

[edit] Labour

[edit] Infrastructure

• Complete the HS2 high-speed rail line from London through Birmingham to Leeds and Manchester, and then into Scotland.
• Build a new Brighton Main Line for the South East.
• Build Crossrail 2.
• Deliver rail electrification and expansion across the whole country.
• Deliver universal superfast broadband availability by 2022.

[edit] Industrial strategy

• Ensure that 60% of the UK’s energy comes from zero-carbon or renewable sources by 2030.
• Ban shale gas fracking.

[edit] Housing

• Remove government restrictions that stop councils building homes.
• Invest to build more than a million new homes. By the end of the next Parliament, be building at least 100,000 council and housing association homes a year for genuinely affordable rent or sale.
• Establish a new Department for Housing to focus on tackling the crisis.
• Overhaul the Homes and Communities Agency to become a housing delivery body, and give councils new powers to build the homes local communities need.
• Prioritise brownfield sites and protect the green belt.
• Start work on a new generation of New Towns to build homes and avoid urban sprawl.
• Insulate more homes.
• Consult on new rules on minimum space standards to prevent 'rabbit hutch’ properties and on new modern standards for building 'zero carbon homes’.
• Keep the Land Registry in public hands, and make ownership of land more transparent.
• Suspend the right-to-buy policy to protect affordable homes for local people, with councils only able to resume sales if they can prove they have a plan to replace homes sold like-for-like.

[edit] Liberal Democrats

[edit] Infrastructure

• £100 billion package of additional infrastructure investment.
• Install hyperfast, fibre-optic broadband across the UK.
• Significant investment in road and rail infrastructure, including continued commitment to HS2, Crossrail 2 and rail electrification.

[edit] Housing

• New direct spending on house building to help build 300,000 homes a year by 2022.
• £5 billion of initial capital for a new British Housing and Infrastructure Development Bank, using public money to attract private investment for these priorities.
• Create at least 10 new garden cities in England.
• End the voluntary Right to Buy pilots that sell off housing association homes.
• Lift the borrowing cap on local authorities and increase the borrowing capacity of housing associations.
• Scrap exemptions on smaller housing development schemes from their obligation to provide affordable homes.
• Require local plans to take into account at least 15 years of future housing need.
• Create a community right of appeal where planning decisions go against the approved local plan.

Enable local authorities to:

• Levy up to 200% council tax on second homes and ‘buy to leave empty’ investments from overseas.
• Enforce housebuilding on unwanted public sector land.
• Penalise excessive land-banking when builders have failed to build after three years.
• End the Right to Buy if they choose.

[edit] Sustainability

• Ensure that four million properties receive insulation retrofits by 2022.
• Pass a new Green Buildings Act to set new energy-efficiency targets, including a long-term ambition for every home in England to reach at least an energy rating of B and C by 2035.
• Restore the zero-carbon standard for new homes, increasing the standard steadily and extending it to non-domestic buildings by 2022.

[edit] Skills

• Develop the skilled workforce with a major expansion of high-quality apprenticeships, including advanced apprenticeships, backed up with new sector-led national colleges.

[edit] Scottish National Party

• £400 million to deliver superfast broadband to 95% of properties across Scotland by the end of 2017. Reach 100% by 2021.
• Invest more than £3 billion to deliver at least 50,000 new affordable houses, of which at least 35,000 will be houses for social rent.
• Introduce a Warm Homes Bill to help tackle fuel poverty.
• Continue to invest in Help to Buy and Shared Equity schemes, helping first time buyers onto the housing ladder.
• Not allow fracking or underground coal gasification in Scotland unless it can be proved beyond any doubt that it will not harm the environment, communities or public health.

[edit] Plaid Cymru

• Invest £7.5 billion in Welsh Infrastructure.
• Re-open of the Carmarthen–Aberystwyth railway.
• Improved valleys train services.
• Improvements to the A55 in north Wales.
• The expansion of the Traws Cymru bus network.
• A commitment to making ultra-fast broadband available to all of Wales.
• Roll out 5G mobile signal nationwide.
• Increase energy generation from renewables.
• Deliver tidal lagoons in Swansea Bay, Cardiff and Colwyn Bay.
• Create an energy company to use profit from Welsh resources to cut the cost of energy for Welsh consumers.

[edit] Green Party

• A major programme to build affordable, zero carbon homes, including 100,000 social rented homes each year by 2022.
• A public works programme of insulation.
• Investing in flood defences and natural flood management.
• Strong protection for the green belt, National Parks, SSSIs and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
• End mass council house sales and scrap Right to Buy at discounted prices.
• Bring empty homes back into use and trial a Land Value Tax to encourage the use of vacant land and reduce speculation.
• Help first-time buyers by aiming for house price stability - axe buy-to-let tax breaks, and back community-led approaches to building affordable homes.
• Require all councils to appropriately plan for the housing needs of deaf, disabled and older people.
• Invest in regional rail links and electrification of existing rail lines, rather than HS2.
• Invest in low-traffic neighbourhoods and safe, convenient networks of routes for walking and cycling.

[edit] UK Independence Party

• Access low interest government loans to buy and renovate poor housing stock or empty commercial properties, to create quality residential accommodation.
• Issue compulsory purchase orders for poor quality houses in multiple occupation.
• Establish a Housing Development Corporation to acquire primarily brownfield sites where affordable housing is required.
• Roll out 100,000 low-cost factory-built modular homes every year.
• Launch a review into the operations of housing associations.
• Scrap HS2.

[edit] Find out more

[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings Wiki

• 2017 election manifestos and infrastructure.
• CIOB 2017 manifesto.
• Election 2017 and housing quality.
• ICE manifesto for General Election 2017.
• Key Brexit challenges facing infrastructure and construction.
• Overcoming the challenges of Brexit.
• UandI housing manifesto 2017.