Our comment on PM Theresa May's £2 billion housing investment announcement

Bjorn Howard, group chief executive of Aster Group

The Prime Minister’s long-term pledge is welcome recognition of the critically important role housing associations have to play in tackling the UK’s housing crisis over the next decade. We are making our own commitment to deliver 1,000 new homes every year by investing £2.1bn of our own capital between now and 2025. 

“What was missing from the Prime Minister’s announcement was any mention of other forms of affordable housing, like shared ownership, that have the potential to help many thousands of people to get onto the housing ladder. As a nation, we still look at housing as a binary choice between renting or buying, much as we did in the 1950s.  

“We’ve argued for a long time that policy makers need to ensure that the government puts a priority on promoting shared ownership, by positioning it on an equal footing to Help to Buy, for instance. And inequalities, such as the fact that first-time-buyer stamp duty relief isn’t available on all shared ownership properties, need to be removed.”