Scrapping the watchdogs

The Conservatives will announce the abolition of Natural England and the Environment Agency as part of a wider deregulation package that also abolishes affordable homes and community funding rules. The party said the two bodies were blocking too many homes from being built and adding unnecessary costs to construction, and it presents the move as a streamlined regulatory landscape that still protects the environment. Both would be scrapped, with their necessary functions transferred directly into Defra.

Andrew Griffith, the shadow chancellor, will present the plans to the conference as cheaper homes, lower taxes and less red tape, calling them the most ambitious deregulation project in a generation.

He will say the plans would cut back the regulations protecting nature and the obligations that make developers include affordable homes and services such as GP surgeries, so that infrastructure and housebuilding move faster. No one else is coming to save the economy, he will argue.

Homes and planning rules

The party claims its measures would cut the price of a new home by £50,000. They include scrapping net zero rules on housebuilding, among them the Future Homes Standard, which requires all new homes in England to be zero-carbon ready. The Tories will also promise to sweep away the current system of developer obligations:

• •Replacing section 106 agreements and the community infrastructure levy, which require developers to build a proportion of affordable housing and to support local school and health service demands
• •In their place, a single "one stop" levy on developers, as Griffith will set out

Katie Lam, the new shadow housing secretary, will say that scrapping housing regulations and enforcement bodies would mean anti-growth ideologues can never again hold the country hostage.

Heathrow and tax

In his first speech as shadow chancellor, Griffith will commit the Tories to backing Heathrow airport expansion and leaving the Aarus convention, which makes it easier for community groups to oppose developments. He will say the government must speed up a third runway by whatever means it can, because a country of Brunel and Bazalgette, of the vaccine taskforce and the Mulberry harbours, should not wait until the 2040s. Andy Burnham has recently expressed personal scepticism about the third runway, saying he would take differing views seriously.

On tax, Conservative shadow Treasury ministers will be tasked with finding new ways of simplifying tax for individuals and businesses. Griffith describes the tax code as "a cat's cradle of complexity".

The conference backdrop

Monday's announcements at the Conservative party conference are intended to refocus attention on the economy, an area where the party has made relatively little progress in the polls. Polls place the Conservatives third behind Labour and Reform UK. Strategists see a major opening to make gains against Reform and Labour, because Andy Burnham and chancellor John Healey gave growth only limited focus at the Labour conference the week before.

Introducing The Right Way, the document she published on Sunday, Kemi Badenoch said her party must be different from Labour and different from the party it was two years ago.

The document, she said, would be the bedrock underpinning the party's policy development before the next election, and it is inspired by Margaret Thatcher's The Right Approach from 1976. Badenoch said the Conservatives still expect to win the next election and must be ready to govern from day one. She said Keir Starmer had no plan and that this was why he was gone, and that Andy Burnham has no plan either, which is why she expects his announcements to come to naught.

Griffith will promise the party will set out its plans line by line, covering every bill, regulation and chapter.