BPF Spotlight Series: King's Speech 2024
Following yesterday's bumper King's Speech, we caught up with our Director of Policy Ion Fletcher to get the key take-aways.
This was the longest King's Speech in two decades, what were the key announcements for the built environment?
Planning reform, residential renting reform and residential leasehold reform.
But there was more: plans to create a new national energy company and a new national wealth fund signal a real intent to invest in green infrastructure, which should support both ambitions to decarbonise the built environment and provide critical additional grid capacity to support new development.
It’s also good to see this Government continue along the journey to greater devolution and more standardisation of what that devolution looks like. And there are property sector angles to Martyn’s Law and proposed new laws around cyber security and digital information.
Labour's made planning reform central to its plans for economic growth, did the King's Speech set out any more detail?
Yes and no. The rhetoric ahead of the election was mostly around getting large infrastructure projects built more quickly and less about the more local projects our sector works on. It was therefore good to see the King’s Speech refer to modernising planning committees and increasing planning authority capacity.
But there was no detail of how these will play out in practice. And big questions around what reformed CPO compensation rules might look like. While we’re pragmatic to how New Towns can be enabled by a public body buying land without paying hope value, extending this power much beyond these circumstances could make CPOs an even more contentious and drawn-out process.
Renters' reform was being legislated for by the last Government, but its Bill fell after the election was called. What do we know about the new Government's Renters' Rights proposals?
They largely pick up where the previous Government left off. There was cross-party consensus on the abolition of “no-fault” evictions while introducing new and clear grounds for possession. Unsurprisingly, the new Government is keen to make sure that private rented homes meet decent standards; something our members will agree with.
We’ll be pressing for more detail on the court reform that we’ll need in order to support a new model of residential leasing, for leases to have a minimum term of six months and an exemption for PBSA, which clearly has a very different dynamic to the wider private rented sector.
The King's Speech included draft legislation on leasehold, wasn't there an Act on this passed only two months ago?
Yes, but Labour had promised to go further than that in its Manifesto and abolish leasehold altogether and this draft Bill would set out how they plan to do it. But it’s interesting (a) that the Government is proposing only draft legislation in this area and (b) just how much they will be consulting on any changes. They clearly recognise it’s a complex area of law and that any further changes need to be very carefully considered to avoid unintended consequences.
