Last week, the Government unveiled a housing white paper: Fixing our broken housing market. The majority of the paper focuses on ways to increase the rate of house building and gives Local Authorities more powers to do this.

There are a range of policies aimed at helping to diversify the housing market and helping people to afford a home, as well as changes that can be made to planning law and policy.

The government have placed greater onus on rented accommodation. The White Paper explicitly sets out it wants to “ensure more longer-term tenancies are available in private rented schemes”. The government will also ensure there is a three year minimum tenancy - this only applies to new build homes and not those who are in existing private rented sector accommodation.

There is not much new on the affordable rent front but just a reaffirmed commitment to build more of them, as unveiled in the Autumn Statement. The £1.4bn fund that was announced, plus an opening up of the Affordable Homes Programme to include Affordable Rent, was given further backing in the White Paper.

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