AUTUMN BUDGET 2024
AUTUMN BUDGET 2024 - KEY CONSIDERATIONS
The Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves has delivered her first Budget, accompanied by a full fiscal statement from the OBR. There are a number of key announcements that the real estate sector should be aware of, including:
Planning: Promises of “pro-growth reforms” and investment
The Government has promised to respond to the National Planning Policy Framework consultation before the end of the year to confirm “pro-growth reforms”.
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The Planning and Infrastructure Bill is to be introduced into Parliament in early 2025 with a focus on streamlining and simplifying the planning system to ensure, “the planning system supports public and private investment.”
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The Budget document also says that there will be a £46 million investment in boosting capacity and capability in planning authorities, which includes proposals to hire hundreds of new planning officers, albeit at a relatively junior/entry level.
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£5million has been allocated to improve the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) regime. In the Treasury document, the government identified “investment, infrastructure and planning” as one of seven “pillars” to “rebuild Britain”. It also confirmed an announcement made two weeks prior that it would publish a ten-year infrastructure strategy alongside phase 2 of the Spending Review in spring.
Housing: Race to build 1.5million homes given significant but insufficient investment
The Chancellor announced that the government would invest £5bn in housebuilding next year as she announced a number of measures to boost delivery towards the Labour administration’s target of 1.5 million new homes over the next five years.
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That investment includes a further £500million for the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) and £3bn of additional support for SMEs and the build-to-rent (BTR) sector in the form of housing guarantee schemes. £128million was allocated to existing planned housing projects across the UK.
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The stock of social housing will be increased through a new 5-year social housing rent settlement that will give the sector more long-term certainty on funding and allow them to invest in tens of thousands of new homes. The existing stock will also be protected by reducing Right to Buy discounts so that thousands more council homes remain in the sector.
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A further £47 million of funding has been ringfenced “to support the delivery of up to 28,000 homes that would otherwise be stalled due to nutrient neutrality in affected catchments”.
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Following the recent Grenfell Inquiry, £1 billion has been provided to accelerate the remediation of blocks with dangerous cladding.
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Looking deeper into the Budget, the government has confirmed that it is extending the discounted Public Works Loan Boards (PWLB) lending rate to local authorities for the funding of capital expenditure in their Housing Revenue Accounts until March 2026.
In order to tackle homelessness, the Government has provided a £233million top up to bring the total spending to over £1billion in 2025/26.
Transport and infrastructure:
The Chancellor highlighted that transport is critical to any plans we have of boosting regional growth and innovation. The Budget provides public investment to ‘priority’ transport schemes including the TransPennine route upgrade between Manchester and York under the ‘Northern Powerhouse Rail’ project as well as supporting the east-west rail links between Oxford and Cambridge.
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In addition, the Chancellor confirmed that the government will “secure delivery” of the HS2 rail link connecting London and Birmingham, and that it would provide funding to begin tunnelling work to London Euston station.
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From a highways perspective, there will be a £500m increase in the roads budget next year to target potholes.
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The government plans to invest over £500 million in 2025-26 to deliver Project Gigabit and Shared Rural Network to drive the rollout of digital infrastructure to underserved parts of the UK, including delivering nationwide gigabit broadband coverage by 2030.
Business rates: Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Relief is extended but reduced
Business rates relief for the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors has been extended for a further year albeit at a reduced discount rate of 40% (currently 75%). The maximum amount of the relief is £110,000 per business. This means that many businesses in retail, hospitality and leisure will face an increase of nearly double their existing business rates bill by April next year. The Chancellor announced that, from April 2026, the Government will permanently lower business rates for companies in this sector. This reduction will be funded by a higher amount payable for properties with rateable values above £500,000. This bracket is intended to cover the kind of distribution warehouses used by online retail giants. The actual multipliers for these measures will be set at the Autumn Budget next year. The small business rates multiplier has been frozen for a further year.
Investment vehicles: Reserved Investor Fund a potentially exciting addition for real estate
The Autumn Budget confirmed that the UK will introduce a Reserved Investor Fund (Contractual Scheme) (“RIF”). The RIF, which is a new Alternative Investment Fund, will be open to professional and institutional investors. It is expected to be particularly attractive for investment in commercial real estate.
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The RIF will be a co-ownership authorised contractual scheme, which is to say, it will be based on a contractual arrangement between the fund operator, depositary and its investors.
Based on previous proposals set out by the Conservative Government, the following conditions will need to be met for a fund to quality as a RIF, namely:
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It is UK based;
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It is widely held; and;
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It meets one of the following three conditions (which are designed to prevent non-residents indirectly disposing of UK real estate free from UK capital gains tax):
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at least 75% of the value of its assets is derived from UK property;
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all investors in the RIF are exempt from tax on gains; or
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it does not invest directly in UK property or UK property rich (i.e. 75% of value) companies
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Both the above and the tax treatment of the RIF will be confirmed by the new legislation.
Race to net-zero: Promising signs, missed opportunities
Measures announced in the Budget included funding for the new Great British Energy, a publicly owned company, which will have a budget of £125 million in 2025-26. This is in addition to the initial capitalisation of £8.3bn announced earlier this year.
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Provisions for clean energy and net-zero include funding for investment in carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear and “green hydrogen” made with renewable electricity. The government will also take further measures to catalyse private investment in the economy. This includes creating the national wealth fund to catalyse over £70bn of private investment in the UK’s clean energy and growth industries.
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The budget confirmed plans to capitalise the national wealth fund, which would “invest in the industries of the future, from gigafactories (for batteries or electric vehicles) to ports to green hydrogen”.
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As part of the commitment to “securing the UK’s place as a global leader in clean energy, protecting consumers and driving economic growth” the budget also notes that the government has commissioned advice from National Energy System Operator on reaching net-zero electricity by 2030. This will feed into the government’s own “clean-power 2030 action plan”.
Reactions from the Davitt Jones Bould team:
“I am concerned that this budget, which sets the tone for the years ahead, is a missed opportunity for the government to build the strong, dynamic relationships it needs with businesses if they have any chance of delivering improvements to the UK’s housing shortage, infrastructure challenges, underperforming high streets and the economy. SMEs, which are key to our economic growth, will face further financial pressure due to the joint increase in employer national insurance, the substantial reduction in the level at which employers start paying NI and the increase in the national minimum wage. The reform of business rates for leisure, hospitality and retail businesses in 2026/27 has been a long time coming, but the reduction of rates relief from 75% to 40% up to £110,000 from April 2025 will see their business rates nearly doubled. Businesses are shouldering much of the burden.”
Peter Allinson,
Chief Executive
Chrisa Tsompani,
Partner (Planning)
“In a historic Budget announcement, delivered on 30th October 2024, for the first time by a female Counsellor of Exchequer, the newly elected Labour Government’s focus was towards the delivery of housing and infrastructure projects, with 70 million in 2025-2026 to be allocated to support infrastructure and housing development “while boosting nature’s recovery” and £5 million towards improvements to the planning regime for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects. £46 million was also allocated to boost capacity and capability in local planning authorities, under which fund 300 new planning officers will be appointed by local authorities to deliver the Government’s ambitious planning reform agenda. In the Budget, the Government also committed to update the relevant National Policy Statements within 12 months “to provide certainty to industry on the objectives for nationally significant infrastructure.”
These announcements are promising and a step in the right direction in boosting the economy and delivering more houses. However, these commitments alone won’t be enough to tackle the housing crisis, which has deteriorated in the last few years due to several factors, including the cost-of-living crisis. The Government hopes that with its planning reform agenda and some stability, the housing industry will grow, and the affordable housing stock will increase. However, given the complexities of the matter and the reluctance of Local authorities to release the appropriate land to build more affordable housing, more drastic interventions are needed. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill and the new version of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), a material consideration for planning permissions, are anticipated to increase the local authorities’ housing targets, making them mandatory, and release green belt land, boosting housing. The Government has confirmed that it will respond to the NPPF’s consultation before the end of this year, notwithstanding some previous announcements on delays, and the Planning and Infrastructure Bill will be published early next year. The recruitment of 300 more planning officers is also welcome, but most new planners are expected to be graduates, which means they won’t be able to assist the local authorities in the short term in progressing complex cases, which need resources and expertise. It therefore may take a while before the real impact of these interventions can be seen.”
“From the environmental perspective, the shift in rules to allow for more public capital investment will be crucial for the financing of green infrastructure. The budget is lacking in key areas however, like supporting businesses with their own energy transition. Commercial buildings are responsible for a full third of the nations power usage, yet the support to make them ‘greener’ remains insufficient and unclear. From a social perspective, it is good to see tackling the housing crisis as being a key priority for this Government. They were never going to be able to make sufficient investment to meet the need in their first budget, but to achieve the 1.5million home target, the Government will have to go further, faster in their upcoming Government Housing Strategy and AFP funding streams, set to be announced next Spring. It would have been good to see transport funding being prioritised for ‘left behind’ places on our coast and in rural communities but that wasn’t to be, and sadly that will continue to feel cut-off after this budget. The digital connectivity budget should be allocated on a needs basis to counter act this.”