Building more homes where people need them

Today the Prime Minister announced plans to build new homes in our cities, protecting our precious greenbelt land by building the right homes where there is the most need and where there is local support, and growing the economy. 

• We cannot provide the homes people need by concreting over the countryside or sacrificing our precious greenbelt land – our housebuilding must be delivered in the heart of Britain’s great cities.

• That is why the Conservatives will deliver on our manifesto commitment to build one million new homes by the end of this Parliament, by fast-tracking sites for brownfield development and delivering new infrastructure, backed by £550 million, redoubling efforts to deliver homes in places like London, Cambridge and Leeds, and streamlining planning processes to help homeowners extend their houses outwards and upwards.

• It would be an equal and opposite mistake to concrete over the countryside - which all too often appears to be Labour policy - and which would lead to uncontrolled sprawl, or alternatively to give in to any and every objection to all developments to the extent that builders can hardly put one brick on top of another, which in practice appears to be what would happen with the Liberal Democrats. 

• What we need instead is a plan to build the right homes in the right places, where there is community support. And here it is.