14 COMMENT THE SOCIAL NETWORK
THERE WILL BE TROUBLE AHEAD
Patrick Mooney, editor of Housing, Management & Maintenance
Patrick Mooney, housing consultant and news editor of Housing, Management & Maintenance, explains the evidence pointing towards huge difficulties ahead for the industry in meeting the growing demand for housing.
long time, and it often feels like we are simply repeating ourselves time and time again. But a number of recently published reports have really hit home and underlined the need for stronger and urgent action from both central and local government.
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The scale of the supply problem was graphically revealed in a report from Civitas, a respected think-tank, whose analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics showed that one million more young adults (aged 20 to 34) are living with their parents than was the case 20 years ago. The number has risen from 2.4 million in 1997 to 3.4 million in 2017.
IN THE SOCIAL SECTOR OVER- CROWDING HAS RISEN TO ITS HIGHEST RECORDED LEVEL WITH MORE THAN 300,000 HOUSEHOLDS SQUEEZED INTO TOO FEW ROOMS
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This has profound implications for both the young people and their parents. It has also led to a sharp fall in ‘single living’ among young adults, as the number of people aged 25 to 44 living alone in the UK has fallen from 1.8 million in 2002 to 1.3 million in 2017. “The data is bearing out what we feel anecdotally to be the case,” said Daniel Bentley, the editorial director of Civitas. “Younger people are beginning to live with their parents for longer and are finding it more difficult to move out. If they do move out, they’re often living with larger groups of people.”
Latest results from the English Housing Survey reveal overcrowding in the social housing sector has risen to its highest recorded level with more than 300,000 households squeezed into too few rooms. There are also more than 250,000 households in the private rented sector living in overcrowded homes. Added together, they show at least one million
people are crammed into overcrowded proper- ties, with overcrowding rates now eight times higher in social housing and six times higher in private rented accommodation than among owner-occupiers’ homes. It should come as no surprise that Shelter’s Housing Commission has recommended 3.1 million extra social homes are built in the next 20 years, based on current and future demand trends.
arnings of the difficulties faced in building the number of houses we badly need have been around for a
IS HOUSEBUILDING REALLY A TOP PRIORITY?
The release of the Civitas report coincided with a report from the National Audit Office warning us in stark terms that targets for the building of new homes are likely to be missed in at least half of the country. This puts a huge question mark over the Government’s ability to deliver 300,000 new homes a year by the mid 2020s even though Ministers say housebuilding is a top policy priority.
The NAO point out that between 2005/06 and 2017/18 we built an average of 177,000 new homes a year and the number has never exceeded 224,000. While the number of new builds has increased every year since 2012/13, for the Government to meet its target it will need to oversee a 69 per cent increase in the average number of new homes built since 2005/06. The chances of this happening do not look particularly good despite the very welcome measures taken recently to increase new house- building by councils and housing associations. It is hoped that Whitehall will use this year’s Spending Review to provide a further boost to the money available for new social housing. But money is not the only problem that requires fixing. Shortages of skilled labour across all construction trades and the actions of volume builders in carefully managing the release of new homes onto the housing market are both enormous limiting factors on the supply side. And there is even more going wrong than this.
The NAO concluded that the planning system in England is “not working well” and councils are struggling to negotiate successfully with developers, leaving large parts of the country vulnerable to either housing shortages or situa- tions where the wrong homes are built in the wrong places. This could have serious long-term consequences, which is why it needs addressing now.
THE REAL IMPACT OF SPENDING CUTS Since the beginning of austerity in 2009/10, there has been an almost 40 per cent cut in spending on planners and planning functions in
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