Six ways Andy Burnham can start solving the UK's housing crisis

Andy Burnham needs to focus on "getting Britain building and renovating again."

That's the view of leading property expert Jonathan Rolande, who has urged the incoming Prime Minister to make addressing the UK housing crisis one of his top priorities as he prepares to formally take office on 20 July.

Jonathan says that if Mr Burnham wants to reverse the economic decline many people are feeling, he needs to start with making homes more affordable, and that means building and getting more back to use.

"Britain has spent much of the last decade talking about transformation," Jonathan said. "Governments have made sweeping promises about housing reform but for many young people buying a house remains an impossible dream.

"Ordinary families don't feel more prosperous and the 'cost of living crisis' is still something being talked about on a regular basis.

"Wages have, after tax, stagnated, inflation has continued to rise and many younger people have lost confidence that they'll enjoy a better standard of living than their parents.

"And it's that sense of decline which is becoming a real issue for anyone occupying Number 10.

"It's very hard for people to buy into capitalism when they don't have any capital, and at the centre of that lies housing.

"It underpins millions of jobs, provides retirement security for many homeowners and, above all, determines whether people have somewhere affordable to live. Yet almost every part of the housing market is under strain.

"We don't need another grand housing strategy that disappears into consultation papers, we need practical reforms that remove obstacles and get the market working again."

Here are the six things Jonathan would love to see Mr Burnham do from day one.

1. Reform Stamp Duty

Stamp Duty has become a handbrake on the entire housing market. Thousands of older people would happily move into smaller homes but the tax bill simply isn't worth it. Freeing those people to move would release larger family homes while creating demand for apartments that many developers are currently struggling to sell. You also have people in smaller homes who aren't prepared to give HMRC £15,000 for the sake of an extra bedroom or closer proximity to a station, which then blocks the lower rungs of the ladder.

2. Bring empty properties back to life

We do not have a housing shortage of the kind many people imagine. What we have is a shortage of usable homes in the places people actually want to live. There are something like a million under-used or empty properties in this country, and a good portion of them could be nursed back into service with the right mix of carrot and stick. The government needs to make it quicker and cheaper to do up an unsaleable property and get it let or sold. Aim grants and tax reliefs at the genuine empties and harden the penalties for owners who simply sit on properties to hoard wealth.

3. Stop treating landlords like the bad guy

The private rented sector is not going to vanish because politicians and tenants dislike it. People rent for all sorts of perfectly sensible reasons: flexibility, work, a relationship that has ended, a deposit not yet saved, or simply the absence of anything else. If you want that sector to be better, you need higher standards and a steady supply of homes within it, which means treating landlords as professionals rather than vampires. Unless landlords can offset some of their mortgage interest, many will not buy. When they stop buying, supply shrinks. When supply shrinks, rents rise. You can cap rents but then there'll be no rentals at all.

4. Speed up the buying process

Buying and selling a home in England and Wales is a shambles. We must press on with reforms that inject some certainty into the whole process. Listen to the people who do this for a living: the conveyancers, surveyors, agents, lenders and professional buyers know exactly what is wrong. Fix the parts that need it, then leave everything else well alone.

5. Stop thinking inflation is about champagne and handbags

Inflation is not being driven by reckless households splurging on luxuries, it's being driven by rising essential costs like energy. We need an energy policy that actually lowers bills, as this will feed into every sector of the economy, from farming and food to housing and travel. Get inflation under control and you can then lower interest rates, which boosts the housing market.

6. Raise the VAT threshold

Housing is not only bricks and mortar, it is trades, supply chains and small firms. The VAT registration threshold sits at around £90,000 and has risen by barely 15 per cent since 2012, a time in which plenty of costs have doubled. Raise the VAT threshold. Let the builders, carpenters, plasterers and painters expand without slamming into a cliff edge that forces them to turn work away, cap their turnover, or increase their charges to homeowners by 20 per cent.