Liz Truss wins Tory leadership contest to become next PM

Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, criticised Ms Truss for spending more time during the campaign talking about cuts to corporation tax than the cost of living crisis.

Speaking to journalists at Friern Barnet School in north London, he said: “That shows not only is she out of touch but that she’s not on the side of working people…

“There can be no justification for not freezing energy prices… So, she needs to show that she actually understands and can meet the challenges that are there after 12 years of failure of this Tory government.”

Ms Truss takes the reins in government at a time that several key changes are under way at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. These include the consultation, launched at the end of August, over a proposed rent cap for social housing providers.

Elsewhere, the long-awaited Social Housing Regulation Bill is working its way through parliament, following its introduction to the House of Lords in June.  The bill, which follows the publication of the Social Housing White Paper in November 2020, will provide the Regulator of Social Housing with bolstered powers to regulate consumer issues, among other key measures to strengthen the accountability of providers to their residents.

Other changes from Johnson’s government

Mr Johnson’s government has launched several changes and consultations over its three-year tenure, since he won a leadership contest to succeed Theresa May in July 2019 and secured a general election victory in December that year.

In January 2020, the government announced the establishment of a new Building Safety Regulator within the Health and Safety Executive, as part of a wave of measures to bring about what it called the “biggest change in building safety for a generation”.

As the COVID-19 pandemic set in, Mr Johnson’s administration introduced lockdowns, which slowed housebuilding activity, advised registered providers to pause non-essential housing allocations, and temporarily banned evictions in both the social housing and private rented sectors.

In the 2020 Budget, Mr Sunak, in the role of chancellor, announced a £12bn Affordable Homes Programme, a reduction in the interest rate on council borrowing for social housing and a new £1bn Building Safety Fund.

The government proposed a raft of measures to help shared ownership buyers, in November 2020.

These included a drop in the minimum first tranche purchase to 10 per cent, and the ability for owners to ‘staircase’ in increments as small as one per cent with reduced fees.

In his 2021 Budgets, Mr Sunak said housing associations would be exempt from the cladding tax that developers face and confirmed plans for a new mortgage guarantee scheme to help first-time buyers.

In January this year, then-housing secretary Michael Gove announced that developers would be forced to pay their share of cladding remedial costs to the tune of £4bn.

And in June, Mr Johnson announced plans to extend the Right to Buy to housing association tenants. However, with Mr Johnson leaving office it is unclear whether this will become a reality.