Boris Johnson promises thousands of houses for first-time buyers with 30% discount

Boris Johnson has vowed ‘radical reforms’ to the country and has set aside £12bn – first announced in the budget – for funding for new homes. 

This morning the prime minister vowed to get the country back on track with a new deal which will see a programme of building and investment. 

Boris announced ‘the most radical reforms to our planning system since the Second World War’.

Alongside this programme, he has confirmed that the government will set aside £12 billion for the funding of new homes. This will support 180,000 new affordable homes for ownership and rent over the next eight years.

Included in that, is a new pilot of ‘First Homes’ that will provide a 30% discount to first time buyers.

The properties will be the exact same as others, but just sold to local first-time buyers who have been struggling to buy a home in the current market for 30% less.

The discount is said to be passed on to future buyers when First Homes are resold, to give more people the opportunity to get on the property ladder. 

The final design of the First Homes scheme is yet to be confirmed.

The PM said today: “We will build fantastic new homes on brownfields sites and other areas, with better transport and other infrastructure, that could be suitable and right for development.

“We will address that intergenerational injustice and help young people get people the housing ladder the way their parents and grandparents could.

“We will build better, we will build greener, and faster.”

In revealing the plan to help Britain ‘get back on its feet’, he said: “It is time not just for a new deal, but a fair deal for the British people.

“This government is determined to use this crisis finally to tackle this country’s unresolved challenges of the last three decades.

“We will build the homes, fix the NHS, solve social care, to tackle the skills crisis, to mend the indefensible gap in opportunity, productivity and connectivity between the regions of the UK. To unite, and level up.

“To that end, we will build, build, build. Build back better, build back greener, build back faster.”

He added: “This is a programme for jobs, jobs, jobs – because it’s by building, building, building… that we will get the jobs this nation needs.”

Boris Johnson has vowed to not return to the years of ‘what people call austerity’. He says: “the world has moved on since 2008”.

“We are preparing now – slowly, cautiously – to come out of hibernation. We cannot continue simply to be prisoners of this crisis”, he said.

The prime minister has warned of the rocky economic time ahead that will see job losses. 

Currently, 2.8 million people are unemployed in the UK and it’s predicted this number could rise by a further one million during the impending economic downturn. 

“We know in our hearts that the furloughing cannot go on forever,” he said.

“We also know that jobs people had in January are not coming back, at least not in that form,” the prime minister said. However, he refused to address how many jobs might be lost overall.

“I remain absolutely certain we need to make sure we keep the tax burden in so far as we possibly can is reasonable and we continue to be a competitive market economy,” he said.

“You know where my instincts are and what I would like to do, they are of course to cut taxes where ever you possibly can.

“The difficulty is we have a generational challenge now. We have to take our country forward.”

He also stressed that Britain needs to remain competitive as it leaves the EU stating: “You need to make sure as we leave the EU, the fiscal environment has to be as competitive as it possibly can be.

“I want brilliant British ideas being translated into brilliant British companies.”