Five Year Plan for Housing

posted on 24 January 2005, updated on 25 January 2005

The ODPM announced its five year plan for housing, Homes for All, on 24 January. The plan is intended to help more people on low and middle incomes into home ownership, through a range of measures.

The document sets out a five year strategy to:

1. Help 80,000 more people into home ownership by 2010, including a new initiative to help first time buyers, in part by using public land for new homes;


2. Introduce a new Homebuy scheme to enable up to 300,000 social tenants to buy a share in their home;


3. Invest £1.1 billion in four Growth Areas across the wider South East and up to £40 million to support other areas which want to pursue growth;


4. Protect the environment and urban heritage through new powers to limit low density development and protect the green belt, and also by introducing a new code for sustainable buildings;


5. Provide all social tenants, and seven out of ten vulnerable people in the private sector, with a decent home; and deliver an extra 10 000 social homes per year;


6. Cut by half the number of people in temporary accommodation by 2010;


7. Extend the market renewal programme to revive housing markets to new areas suffering low demand;


8. Provide support for people who choose alternative types of accommodation, such as gypsies and travellers, but taking action to crack down on unauthorized development.

A partner document to be published later this month, People, Places and Prosperity, will set out a five year plan of action for revitalising communities.

At the same time, the ODPM has also announced changes to its housing planning policy (PPG3), to ensure that planning applications for housing or mixed use developments on redundant commercial land should be considered favourably, and that local planning authorities can allocate small sites solely for affordable housing in small rural communities, which must be permanently dedicated to meeting the needs of key workers and local people. A consultation on further changes to PPG3, ‘Planning for Mixed Communities’, has also been published.

Related links:

• Click here to view PPG3: Housing.
• Click here to view the five year plan.
• Click here to view the ODPM's news release.