Most headlines about the autumn budget focussed on the Chancellor’s stamp duty cuts. The threshold has been raised to £300,000, supposedly to help first-time buyers and families who are desperate to move to bigger properties.
The jury is out on whether the stamp duty break will have its intended effect. But the detail that caught the eye of Chris Coxon, head of marketing at Eurocell plc,
was a plan to lift borrowing caps on Housing Revenue Accounts for local authorities in areas of ‘high affordability pressures’ so that they can build more council homes.
This follows on from Theresa May’s announcement of an additional £2bn funding to deliver 25,000 homes for social rent, during her embattled speech to the Conservative Party Conference in October. And while neither gesture can be considered a game-changer, what they do demonstrate is a change of heart from the Government towards local authority house building.
