What a week at the Labour Party Conference!

What a week at Labour’s conference in Liverpool! Housing was again a huge focus and we had the pleasure of hosting a stand at the event. After more than 100 conversations with delegates, MPs, prospective candidates, councillors and even a couple of McCarthy Stone homeowners, here are our key takeaways from potentially one of the last party conferences before a general election in 2024:

1. There was a great energy across the event and it was one of the most well-attended conferences we’ve been to, signalling an important year in 2024 and a forthcoming general election. Thanks in particular to Labour’s Shadow Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook MP and Shadow Care Minister Andrew Gwynne MP for popping by our stand to talk about the housing needs of older people.

1. There was a smorgasbord of policy announcements on housing and planning, all designed to get Britain building again, which is something we wholeheartedly support. This includes backing brownfield regeneration, reinstating housing targets, creating a ‘genuinely plan-led system’, building new towns and a commitment to complete 1.5 million homes over the course of the next Parliament. There was also a reference to developing ‘grey’ sites in the green belt.
2. Labour sees planning reform and housing delivery as key to their main mission of growing the size of the UK economy. The lack of local plans is a key barrier to this. Currently we’re seeing too many local authorities delay or withdraw their plans, which creates huge uncertainty for everyone and stops housing delivery. It was therefore pleasing to hear that where councils do not adopt a local plan, Labour would write to all Chief Planning Officers to instruct local planning authorities to approve planning applications in areas which do not have a local plan and fail other key policy tests, such as the Housing Delivery Test. This will speed up housing delivery.
3. Labour also announced that they would recruit 300 new planning officers to deal with the backlog in applications and give planning officers stronger authority to grant permission on smaller sites that are in line with the local plan. They will also require local plans to set density standards for appropriate sites around transport routes, with stronger presumptions in favour of brownfield development where plans are not up to date. These sites are often well-suited for new retirement communities as older people like to live in well-located areas, so this should support the delivery of new and much-needed homes for older people.
4. As well as increasing rates of home ownership, Labour are also focused on the delivery of new affordable housing. One of our key messages at the conference was how we at McCarthy Stone also believe in increasing our affordable offering, including delivering social rented housing in partnership with Anchor , launching a new affordable shared ownership option in partnership with Homes England and building new developments at lower price points across the Midlands and North. We are also using MMC in partnership with Sigmat to control rising build costs and build more efficiently and sustainably.

We look forward to continuing our engagement with the Labour Party over the coming months.