Reform UK’s Vision for Housing and Property

Transcript

Hi, I’m Ruban Selvanayagam from Property Solvers.

In this video, I want to look at what the Reform Party – now officially Reform UK – is actually proposing for housing and the property market.

Most of the headlines focus on immigration, taxation, or Nigel Farage’s political positioning – his anti-establishment appeal and calls for a leaner, less bureaucratic state.

But buried in their manifesto and core ideology are proposals that, if implemented, could shift how the entire housing system works – from who gets housed to how property is taxed and regulated.

So let’s examine what’s really on the table: what it means in practice, and how it connects to Reform UK’s wider vision for the economy.

Their most distinctive message isn’t about how many homes to build, but who gets them first. Their housing plan pledges to change the allocation law so that British citizens and long-term residents come first.

They call it a UK Connection Test. The sound-bite is simple: “Local people should be at the front of the queue, not the back.”

That idea taps into a genuine frustration. Social-housing lists in some councils stretch for years, and many residents believe they’re being overtaken. It also sits within a wider narrative Nigel Farage has pushed for years – that Britain’s housing pressure is inseparable from migration.

Reform UK’s leadership argue that rising population growth, driven by record net migration, has collided with a system that simply hasn’t built fast enough to keep up.

His a quick comment by Farage on GB News: “We’re in this extraordinary position where net migration is running at hundreds of thousands every year – we’re not even building enough homes to cope with current levels of migration, let alone the enormous backlog.”

It’s an argument that resonates with voters who see the crisis through the lens of fairness and scarcity – a feeling that Britain should take care of its own before extending help to others, not just in housing but across other stretched systems like the NHS and social care.

Now in practice, most asylum seekers and many recent migrants can’t access social housing because, under the Immigration and Asylum Act, they’re classed as having “no recourse to public funds.”

Only once refugee status is granted – and they’re no longer under immigration control – can they join a local housing register. Even then, councils use residence-based and local-connection tests, introduced under the Localism Act, that already prioritise long-term residents.

For now, Reform’s proposal would give councils a firmer political mandate to apply those rules more strictly.

But if the party ever formed a government or influenced national housing legislation, it could go much further – amending the Housing Act 1996 to redefine who counts as “eligible,” creating a statutory UK connection test, and issuing central guidance requiring councils to prioritise citizens and long-term residents explicitly.

That would mark a genuine policy shift rather than a marginal tightening, and while it would almost certainly face legal challenge under equality and human-rights law, it’s entirely plausible that a Reform administration would try to push it through.

Where the issue becomes most politically charged is in asylum accommodation – and particularly the use of hotels and short-term contracts.

Since 2022, the Home Office has relied heavily on hotels, student halls and converted HMOs to house asylum seekers while claims are processed. The accommodation is arranged through private contractors – notably Serco, Mears, and Clearsprings Ready Homes – which have procured everything from Holiday Inns and Ibis hotels to smaller independent and budget chains under long-term block-booking deals.

The number of people in this type of housing has risen sharply, and many sites have been secured without local consultation. In some high-value areas – including parts of inner London – councils have pushed back, arguing that prime property stock is being tied up by central government without local consent.

Reform UK’s leadership has seized on that sentiment. In May 2025, the party’s chair Zia Yusuf said Reform-run councils would use “every instrument of power available” to stop the Home Office from housing asylum seekers in their areas.

He made the remark during a round of interviews reported by The Guardian and The Independent, shortly after the local elections that gave Reform its first councils.

Behind that statement lies a set of local-government tools. Councils can and do issue Article 4 Directions, removing automatic permitted-development rights for converting family homes into HMOs. Some authorities have used these powers to limit or block asylum accommodation contracts, citing over-concentration or loss of residential amenity.

Reform UK have indicated they’d support more councils doing exactly that – effectively using planning law as a defensive barrier.

Critics warn this risks pushing accommodation demand into poorer or less-organised districts, creating uneven social pressure. Supporters say it’s about restoring local control and protecting the integrity of established communities.

Either way, it’s a strong political signal. Together, the “Locals First” and “Stop the Hotels” positions frame housing not as a macro-economic issue but as a matter of sovereignty and fairness. They appeal to voters who feel their towns have absorbed disproportionate change while being locked out of the housing ladder themselves.

For the wider market, though, the practical impact would be limited. Hotel and HMO contracts are temporary and don’t materially affect long-term stock levels. What they do affect is public perception – the sense that government housing policy prioritises newcomers over locals.

They’re tapping directly into that perception, arguing that before we build anything new, we should decide who qualifies for a home in the first place.

Reform UK’s answer to Britain’s chronic supply problem is, unsurprisingly, deregulatory – perhaps influenced by Richard Tice, the party’s co-founder and former commercial property developer.

Tice has said that “we’ve got to ease the unnecessary costs of getting planning consents,” arguing that planning barriers and environmental red tape restrict the flow of new supply.

The party wants to simplify the planning process, fast-track brownfield sites through what it calls “brownfield passports,” relax certain environmental hurdles, and give local communities more say.

That approach could help small and medium-sized builders who’ve been squeezed by bureaucracy and rising costs; quicker approvals and lighter paperwork might unlock disused plots, office-to-residential conversions, and self-build schemes.

Critics argue that the local-consent model has limits – when every large project faces a potential veto, major schemes can stall. But it’s hard to argue with the idea of shifting momentum back to small and mid-sized developers, broadening competition beyond the big housebuilders and breathing new life into under-used land.

It’s a bottom-up strategy rather than a top-down one – potentially slower to scale, but healthier for diversity, innovation and community involvement.

At the same time, Reform UK have pitched themselves squarely as the landlords’ party. They’ve promised to Reverse Section 24 of the Finance Act 2015, restoring full mortgage-interest tax relief – undoing one of George Osborne’s most contentious fiscal reforms.

They also oppose Labour’s Renters’ Rights Bill, which would abolish Section 21 “no-fault” evictions and strengthen the regulatory framework for landlords and tenants.

Their argument is that punitive taxation and constant rule-changes have pushed small landlords out, shrinking supply and forcing up rents. To fix that, they say Britain needs fewer restrictions and better incentives.

If those policies ever became law, you’d expect to see a revival of small-scale buy-to-let investment, renewed confidence among portfolio landlords, and perhaps a modest increase in available rental stock which could, in turn, actually benefit tenants in the form of lower rents.

But there’s another side. Rolling back protections could expose tenants to greater churn and insecurity – and if tax breaks simply draw in new investors without adding homes, rents stay high. In essence, it’s a pro-market reset.

For landlords, the message is: “You’re not the villain – you’re part of the solution.” For tenants, it’s a reminder that security still depends on supply, not sentiment.

Their broader tax platform doubles as a property stimulus. They propose to Abolish Stamp Duty on purchases up to £750,000 and reduce rates above that, while cutting income-tax bands and flattening corporation tax to 20 per cent.

They’ve even hinted at easing inheritance-tax exposure. The goal is obvious: make ownership and investment cheaper, spur transactions, and energise the middle of the market. But history tells us what happens when you do that: demand jumps faster than supply, and prices follow.

We saw it after the 2020 Stamp Duty holiday – a surge in activity, then a sharper affordability squeeze once the relief ended. So these reforms could spark short-term heat in the £300-to-£700 thousand range – a welcome boost for conveyancers and agents, but another hurdle for first-time buyers.

Reform UK are also openly Sceptical of Britain’s Net Zero Housing Roadmap. They describe mandatory EPC-C targets and forced heat-pump conversions as “ideological overreach,” and would almost certainly pause or scrap the deadlines that drive retrofit costs for landlords.

Much of that scepticism is aimed squarely at Ed Miliband, the current Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary, whose department is pushing to make EPC-C compliance mandatory for rented homes later this decade.

Reform’s stance would immediately ease pressure on thousands of owners of older or listed properties who say the rules are unrealistic and costly to meet. Supporters call it a dose of common sense; critics warn it risks leaving Britain with an ageing, energy-inefficient housing stock for years to come.

And that, really, is the thread running through all of this – a belief that too many rules and targets have created barriers rather than solutions. Whether it’s energy standards, planning restrictions or landlord regulation, the instinct is the same: strip it back and trust the market to sort itself out.

To understand where that comes from, you have to look at the broader mindset. In a recent Bloomberg interview, Nigel Farage joked about sacking Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey, called the Financial Conduct Authority “utterly useless,” and said regulators needed to be friendlier to cryptocurrency because “the world has changed.”

Like it or not, more people seem to be warming to Farage’s anti-bureaucratic streak. Whether you find it visionary or reckless, it reveals a consistent theme – regulation is seen as the problem, not the solution.

That philosophy threads straight into housing: too many planning rules, too many landlord restrictions, too many green mandates. Cut them back and, Reform believes, prosperity will follow. It’s classic Deregulatory Economics – unleash private initiative, trim the state, and trust competition to raise standards.

The risk, as always, is sequencing. Remove guardrails before fixing bottlenecks and you get instability – slower courts, patchier enforcement, environmental backsliding. Markets thrive on freedom, but they need confidence and predictability to function.

Farage’s critics warn that joking about sacking central bankers and gutting oversight might shake that confidence. His supporters counter that it’s the only way to break bureaucratic inertia.

Whichever side you fall on, it’s the same energy driving Reform’s housing stance: simplify first, stabilise later.

Put it all together and the picture looks like this. Landlords would gain from lower tax and looser regulation. Developers would benefit from quicker routes for small sites. Buyers with capital would enjoy cheaper transactions and lighter bureaucracy. In short, the Reform programme shifts momentum from regulation to the market, rewarding ownership and investment at the expense of intervention and oversight.

Activity and sentiment would rise quickly, but so could volatility – especially if supply failed to keep up or if renewed demand reignited the kind of price and rent inflation seen in recent years. With interest rates still sensitive to inflationary shocks, that cycle could easily feed back into higher borrowing costs and affordability pressures.

Ambition, of course, is one thing; delivery another. Reform have never run a department, and many of these promises would probably collide with legal and fiscal realities.

And, as mentioned earlier, changing social-housing eligibility bumps against equality law – and could easily spill into wider social tension. Restricting access, even symbolically, risks protests from housing charities, local campaigners, and communities who see it as divisive.

Reversing Section 24 and slashing Stamp Duty sound great on paper but would blow a multibillion-pound hole in Treasury revenue. A full planning overhaul would require rewriting national policy and years of consultation with councils, developers and environmental bodies.

Even if a future Reform government pushed these measures through, each would likely face resistance – from Whitehall departments worried about fiscal risk, from local authorities defending planning powers, and of course from opposition parties.

Ultimately, Reform’s vision is Bold, Populist and Unmistakably Pro-Market. It aims to reward landlords, lower transaction friction, and put local residents first. It could bring energy back into a sluggish market and re-engage smaller developers.

But it largely redistributes opportunity rather than expands it. None of the proposals guarantee more homes. And without that, affordability remains the unsolved equation at the centre of British housing.

Deregulation can remove bad friction, but it can also remove useful guardrails. The art is getting the order right: fix the courts before rewriting eviction law, build infrastructure before freeing planning, match tax cuts with sustainable funding, and balance national growth with local control.

If a Reform-shaped government managed that sequence correctly, it could revitalise investment. If it didn’t, it would amplify volatility and inequality while leaving the supply crisis untouched.

So, would a Reform housing revolution actually work? It would certainly shake up the system. It might re-energise private investors and make life easier for landlords and small and medium sized homebuilders.

Reform are at least talking about supply – but turning deregulation into real delivery is where every government has struggled. Whether they can finally make it happen is the real test.

So a big thanks for watching until the end, I really do appreciate it. If you found this breakdown useful, hit subscribe for more weekly insights into how policy, regulation and economics shape the UK property market. I’ll hopefully see you in the next one.