Responding to the changes seen over the course of this year, Brown reflected that the domestic economy is still continuing to grow, surpassing expectations for 2006, and Britain is currently benefiting from its longest period of post-war expansion.
He announced the Governments continued commitment to tackling global warming and encouraging greener living, promoting the use of cleaner fuels by supporting the development of bio-fuels and expressing his ambition for all new homes to be ‘zero carbon’ by the year 2016.
If this target is reached, it would mean household carbon emissions which currently accounting for 30 per cent of total emissions, would see a drop over the course of the next 10 years.
The Chancellor also announced an extension of the Warm Front programme which provides insulation and heating at the lowest possible cost to those who most need it; vulnerable households and the over-60s – adding that by 2008 he expects 2.7 million homes to be insulated against the winter chill.
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Tony Herbert, of Citizens Advice sees the additional £7.5 million this will merit as a welcome development, hoping that this is actioned with immediate effect in order to be of benefit to vulnerable people such as low-income families and pensioners this winter.
In addition, all new builds which prove to be carbon neutral will avoid stamp duty, potentially some good news for first-time buyers, however sadly this was the only proposed change to stamp duty and the current threshold remains fixed at £125,000 for the time being.
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He also announced that the Government is now expecting over 160,000 households to start accessing homeownership through public or private shared equity products by the time we reach 2010.
New Brownfield sites will be designated in order to develop 130,000 much needed new homes, something which Adrian Coles, director-general of the Building Societies Association (BSA), is supportive of and believes will ultimately help to rectify the fundamental mis-match between supply and demand.
Coupled with the projected sale of surplus government land and buildings raising an estimated total of £30bn, total investments in UK housing will increase to almost £8bn in 2007.
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However, David Stubbs senior economist at RICS remains critical of Gordon Browns efforts, saying that the Government still does not grasp the level of homebuilding that is necessary. It does nothing to address the backlog of housing demand that has been built up due to persistent undersupply in the past 15 years.
All in all, these new governmental measures all go some way to support Browns vision for the UK economy to out-perform and out-innovate and enable future growth, which will in turn hopefully help to nurture a more diverse, stable and prosperous economy.
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