The new housing strategy for England includes forcing councils to plan for their local housing needs and giving them powers to pressure developers to start building on land they own.

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said people want a decent home not a “false choice” between renting and owning.

Labour accused the government of “seven years of failure” on housing.
The government says at least 250,000 new homes are needed each year to keep pace with demand and local councils and developers need to “get real” to the scale of the challenge.

Mr Javid will set out the details of the housing White Paper in a statement to MPs.

Measures are expected to include:

Forcing councils to produce an up-to-date plan for housing demand
Expecting developers to avoid “low density” housing where land availability is short
Reducing the time allowed between planning permission and the start of building from three to two years
Using a £3bn fund to help smaller building firms challenge major developers, including support for off-site construction, where parts of buildings are assembled in a factory
A “lifetime ISA” to help first-time buyers save for a deposit
Maintaining protection for the green belt, which can only be built on “in exceptional circumstances”
So-called starter homes, championed by ex-PM David Cameron, will be aimed at “households that need them most” with combined incomes of less than £80,000 or £90,000 in London.

The government said there would be a change in focus from starter homes – which will be offered to first-time buyers at a discount – to “a wider range of affordable housing”.

Mr Javid will say: “Walk down your local high street today and there’s one sight you’re almost certain to see. Young people, faces pressed against the estate agent’s window, trying and failing to find a home they can afford.
“With prices continuing to skyrocket, if we don’t act now, a whole generation could be left behind. We need to do better, and that means tackling the failures at every point in the system.

“The housing market in this country is broken and the solution means building many more houses in the places that people want to live.”

Asked if ministers were abandoning their goal of increasing home ownership – an ambition of most post-war Conservative governments – Mr Javid told BBC Radio 4’s Today that the approach “shouldn’t all be about ownership”.
“It is a false choice. The reality is we need more homes, whether to rent or buy.”

With house prices now eight times average earnings and the number of affordable homes being built at a 24-year low, he said the cost of housing was the “greatest barrier to social progress in Britain today”.

Many councils, he added, had “fudged the numbers” when it came to assessing local housing needs and this had to change.

Ministers have admitted the government is behind schedule in its efforts to build one million new homes in England by 2020.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England welcomed what it said was a focus on addressing current failings rather than “meddling” with the planning system.
“We are pleased that ministers have recognised that weakening the Green Belt is unnecessary,” said chief executive Shaun Spiers. “But with 360,000 houses already proposed for Green Belt land the government needs to do much more to uphold national policy and stop councils releasing it for development.”

Labour’s shadow housing minister John Healey said: “The measures announced so far in Theresa May’s long-promised housing white paper are feeble beyond belief.