Omission by the Lib Dems

This is what the Conservative Minister Grant Shapps MP and Minister of State for Housing & Local Government says about the New Home Bonus.

New Homes Bonus ensures that for the first time communities start to see significant benefits from housing development and growth in their area.

For too long, a top-down, centralised system of housing targets pitted communities against developers. It left local people, who best know their neighbourhoods and the pressures they face, without a voice and unable to offer their views on where homes should be built, and how many their area could accommodate. Housebuilding fell to its lowest levels for any peacetime year since 1924 and house prices doubled in the decade from 1997 - leaving increasing numbers of people unable to get a foothold on the property ladder.

But the changes we're making to the planning system will give residents a much greater say over the future development of their local area, including protecting local green spaces and the Green Belt. And where homes are built, it is right that local people share in the prosperity and growth that this will bring to their community.

New Homes Bonus funding can be used however communities see fit to improve their local area - and I would urge all councils expecting to receive funding to speak to their residents about how they would like to see it spent locally.

Grant Shapps MP

This is what the LIB Dems would have you believe

Just as the largest ever investment programme into council housing in Kingston has been launched, the Liberal Democrat Administration has more good news for Council tenants with an announcement that over £500,000 New Homes Bonus Grant will be used this year to bring ten long-term empty three bedroom properties in the Norbiton/Mount Pleasant area back into family use.

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