Residents in Brighton & Hove are losing out under the Tory-led government’s new Housing policy, the New Homes Bonus.

The Bonus is supposed to incentivise councils to grant planning permissions for new housing developments by matching council tax for new homes over a six year period.

According to the House of Commons Library, the New Homes Bonus is going to cost taxpayers at least £1.2bn a year by 2016 but deliver as few as just 14,000 extra homes a year. Before the budget, Labour called on the government to tax bankers’ bonuses and to spend £1.2bn on delivering 25,000 affordable homes.

Experts are already lining up to say that it won’t work and the Tory party’s leaders in local government have gone public with their criticisms. In addition to being expensive and ineffective, research now shows that Brighton & Hove is getting a raw deal from this new Tory policy.

Whilst wealthy Richmondshire District Council, in top Tory William Hague’s constituency, received £6,272 for each extra home in their community, Brighton & Hove gets just under 80% less at £1,273.50 and whilst the City of London has been given £28.51 a head in funding the government has given Brighton & Hove City Council 91% less at just £2.34.

Brighton & Hove Labour & Co-op Leader, Gill Mitchell said:

“I think it’s totally wrong that Brighton & Hove should be treated in this way by the Tory-led government. If the point of this policy is to reward communities for building more houses then the least they should do is make it fair.

“I want to hear an explanation from this Tory-government why they think that Brighton & Hove should receive less money per new home than some of the best off parts of the country.”