Even More New Homes Needed
October 26, 2007
The Government has promised to build an extra three million homes in England by 2020, but it looks like it still won’t be enough. The National Housing and Planning Advice Unit (NHPAU) was set up to advise ministers on new homes, and it has reported that about quarter of a million will be needed.
It also said that affordability will get worse, with average prices in England now at seven times average salary, and heading for nine and half times salary by 2026.
One of the writers of the report, Professor Stephen Nickell, said: “If you’d like to put this sort of thing into perspective we built more than that number back in the 1930s in Britain when we had a considerably smaller population. And most other countries in the developed world, proportionately speaking, build houses at a faster rate than we do.”
At the same time Housing Minister Yvette Cooper will be revealing some funding to encourage local councils to build millions of affordable new homes that are needed across the country. She is expected to announce that councils planning to build most new homes will be given £1,100 per home, and this amount might increase to £5,000 by 2010.
The funding plans also include £510m to return empty homes to useable standard, and councils who work hard on empty properties – which includes any on compulsory purchase order – will get a share of the fund to help with payments.
It is estimated that an astonishing 670,000 homes and properties are currently empty, and in England almost 300,000 are vacant long-term. The funding initiative will channel extra money to areas where new homes increase stock by more than 0.75%.
Recently Ms Cooper warned councils that if they refused to build new homes, they would be betraying first-time buyers, and she is expected to warn that old out of date regional housing targets will provide no excuse for local authorities not to build new homes