Property developers are considering withholding millions of pounds in funding to the Conservative Party amid concerns the government has become a “houseblocker”.
A large amount of donations to the Conservative Party came from housing developers and builders. Tory sources have said such donations have dried up as ministers were accused of bowing to “selfish” MPs who are considered anti-development, as reported by The Times. It has also been suggested that people “might struggle to name a developer who is currently donating”.
Rob Boughton, the chief executive of Thakeham, one of the southeast’s leading developers, wrote on LinkedIn last month:
“Shame on those MPs and the vocal minority they try to protect at the cost of so many.”
Responding to an article in The Times on targets being scrapped, Boughton, whose company has donated nearly £1 million to the Tories since 2017, said:
“What happened to creating opportunity? These small-minded, selfish people just don’t get it.”
He added:
“We need this government to understand the consequences of their actions. What hope do the aspiring [first-time buyers] have? Do they care about 20 to 45-year-olds in this country or not?”
Prompting Gove’s party, colleague and former party chairman Jake Berry, told The Times:
“The government needs to be much more ambitious and that sort of ambition should be building whole new communities. Owning your own home certainly was, and I think still is, the biggest correlation with voting Conservative. If you’re a part of the stance of capitalism you have to enable people to buy capital in society. It’s a very Conservative thing to build more houses and enable people to buy them.”
Last year, the government backed down from its pledge to maintain housebuilding targets due to pressures from backbench Tory MPs. As part of a manifesto pledge the Conservatives aimed to build 300,000 homes per year by the middle of the decade. This was done to address the housing shortages felt across the UK. However, critics argued this would place greater pressure on local authorities to meet quotas to meet these figures.
