From The Independent · · 2m
Tories promise £50,000 cut to new homes via deregulation
The Conservative Party plans to scrap environmental safeguards and planning rules to slash housing costs and boost growth.
In brief
The Conservative Party plans to scrap environmental safeguards and planning rules to slash housing costs and boost growth. Shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith announced plans to cut new-build housing costs by roughly fifty thousand pounds by scrapping environmental standards and planning regulations. Originally reported…
Shadow chancellor unveils housing plan
Andrew Griffith will announce the Conservative Party's blueprint to cut new-build housing costs by roughly fifty thousand pounds through major deregulation.
Plan targets environmental building rules
The Conservatives intend to ditch the Future Homes Standard and housebuilding regulations requiring developers to integrate low-carbon heating systems like heat pumps.
Energy upgrades cost thirty thousand pounds
A two thousand twenty-three Birmingham City Council document showed energy-efficiency upgrades, heat pumps and solar panels could increase detached home construction costs by thirty thousand seven hundred eighty-nine pounds.
Griffith attacks government as socialist
Addressing the Conservative annual conference in Birmingham, Griffith is expected to warn Prime Minister Andy Burnham is pursuing a socialist fever dream of the nineteen seventies.
“We face a Prime Minister that wants to return Britain to an imagined past, a socialist fever dream of the 1970s.”
Plan to abolish environmental agencies
The Conservatives plan to abolish Natural England and the Environment Agency, transferring their functions to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Scrapping packaging fee saves businesses
The plan includes scrapping extended producer responsibility, which obliges companies to cover packaging waste costs. Eliminating the rule could lift a one point five billion pound burden from businesses.
Business groups back deregulation push
Lawrence Newport of Looking for Growth called the proposals significant and radical. The British Retail Consortium and Food and Drink Federation both backed reviewing charges on packaging firms.
Reform UK accuses Tories of copying
Reform UK Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick remarked the Tories are once again copying their policies, but argued the Conservatives cannot match their promise to raise the tax-free personal allowance from twelve thousand five hundred seventy to fifteen thousand pounds.
“The Tories are once again copying our policies.”
Government budget due later this month
Chancellor John Healey, Griffith's opposite number in Government, will deliver his first Budget on October twenty-eighth, as the two parties clash over economic direction.
What it means
Shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith announced plans to cut new-build housing costs by roughly fifty thousand pounds by scrapping environmental standards and planning regulations.
