The Government has introduced a new Housing and Planning Bill to Parliament.

The Bill marks the start of a 'national crusade' pledge by the Prime Minister David Cameron to 'turn generation rent into generation buy'.

The PM had previously announced plans to build one million homes in England by 2020 to tackle the current housing crisis.

Features of the Bill include:

• New 'affordable' Starter Homes – a new legal duty will be placed on councils to guarantee the provision of 200,000 Starter Homes on all reasonably sized new development sites, offered to first-time buyers at a 20% discount on market prices

• Local Plans – providing the government with targeted powers to ensure that all councils get Local Plans in place by 2017, so they can help provide the homes their communities need.


• Pay to Stay – ensuring that tenants on higher incomes who are living in social housing have a rent that reflects their ability to pay, while those who genuinely need support continue to receive it.

• Automatic planning permission on brownfield sites – to bring forward more land to build new homes quicker, while protecting the green belt.

• Planning reforms to support small builders – placing a new duty on councils to help allocate land so 20,000 custom and self-built homes a year can be built by 2020.

• Measures to tackle rogue landlords – giving councils the power to blacklist, and in some cases, ban landlords who don't stick to the law, while helping decent landlords recover abandoned homes quicker.

• Ensuring high value assets are managed effectively – securing the sale of high value council assets that can be used to support people into home ownership.

The Bill's publication comes days after the government reached a deal with housing associations to extend the Right to Buy initiative to 1.3 million tenants from next year.

Housing Minister Brandon Lewis said the Bill's introduction was a "historic moment".

"As a one nation government we're determined that anybody who works hard and aspires to own their own home has the opportunity to do so," he said.

(LM/CD)