Home Ownership: First-Time Buyers

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I can only repeat what I said: it is very important that we encourage our young people, and others looking to buy homes, to consider the wide range of options that are available. I mention two particular institutions that I have been talking to, Lloyds and Santander, which are already going out there with very extensive campaigns. I encourage anybody who is keen to buy a house to go and talk to a broker or lender, because there are options available for people.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I am very glad that the Minister has mentioned shared ownership schemes, because the terms for new schemes are really very good, but many people are stuck on previous detrimental schemes. Following Grenfell and the requirements for them to pay for upgrading, they are absolutely stuck in their homes. Will the Minister say what she is going to do about that, so that people can move into homes where they can have families, because these are often one-bedroom flats? Secondly, will she consider asking the Government to increase the rent a room scheme allocation so that people whose mortgages are going up and are renting out a room can be to some extent compensated to stay in their current homes?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

Shared ownership has a very important role to play in supporting households into home ownership that would otherwise struggle to purchase a property on the open market that meets their needs. We are aware, of course, that some people who have entered shared ownership have faced challenges. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for his work during the passage of the Renters’ Rights Bill to introduce the measures to help with that. We have introduced new expectations for landlords to improve the customer experience. These include giving greater consideration to long-term customer affordability and increasing transparency and fairness on costs. Shared owners will also benefit from the wider leasehold and commonhold reforms in a variety ways. We will debate the commonhold and leasehold reform Bill in due course—but the Act of 2024 grants shared owners the right to statutory lease extensions and makes it easier for them to challenge unreasonable service charges.