Open Letter to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves – Helping first-time buyers

Dear Keir and Rachel,

We are all beavering away at preparing planning applications to help you to reach the 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament. We applaud your efforts on the NPPF and the £39billion for affordable homes and the eagerly anticipated New Towns. 

The chaps at PINS appears to be on message and a large number (but not all…sadly) of Councillors are also on message and we are very much looking forward to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill (do hurry up, we need the new national scheme of delegation and the smaller more professional Planning Committees!).

However, there is a bit of an elephant in the room… First time buyers. 

Now Keir, we know that you grew up in a modest house with a hard working father and a mother who was a nurse before her health got very bad. It was a three bedroom home and you shared a bedroom with your late brother Nick. 

Rachel, you and your sister Ellie grew up in Sydenham with both parents as primary school teachers. 

Rachel, you and your sister Ellie grew up in Sydenham with both parents as primary school teachers. 

Neither of you are from privileged backgrounds where the “bank of mum and dad” could help you to get a deposit to buy your first homes. You have had to work very hard and pinch off money, scrape together the pennies and save to get that first deposit for your first homes. 

There are many millions of people in this country that are in that position. Our parents worked very hard for many, many years to afford their own homes and put a roof over our heads as we grew up but they are not in a position to help us to get that first foot on the housing ladder. 

Sadly, for the first time in about 60 years (give or take) there is no Government backed form of help for first time buyers. If you are hardworking but not fortunate enough to have wealthy parents, there is no safety net for you. You are on your own. 

Rents have sky rocketed and we applaud you for trying to do something about that but it will take many years for most of us to get a deposit together. And unfortunately, as you get older and the time left in your working life to repay that mortgage gets shorter, that dream of owning a home slips further and further away. 

Here I am, I am 47 in two weeks and the ball-n-chain is 47 in January. We work very hard but the reality is that we are now part of a generation that will never realise that dream of owning a home. And I have now made peace with that. 

However, there is a younger generation that CAN be helped. So please, help them. The reality is also that the more first-time buyers you help, the more you will unlock the housing market. Those second and third time buyers that we need to get the market moving. 

We can build 1.5 million homes, but without buyers, the exercise is futile. 

Best wishes,

Henry