28 COMMENT


A QUESTION FOR THE MINISTER...


Patrick Mooney


Patrick Mooney, housing consultant and news editor of Housing, Management & Maintenance magazine asks the ‘64 thousand dollar question,’ after hearing the Housing Minister’s conference speech, namely where will the UK’s much needed new housing come from?


D


uring the recent Housing conference in Manchester, the Housing Minister Rachel McLean gave a surprisingly upbeat assessment of the Government’s housebuilding record and its future prospects. Was she just being loyal to the current administration, or could there be a sound basis for such optimism?


MORE THAN 2.2 MILLION HOMES HAVE BEEN DELIVERED SINCE APRIL 2010 WHEN DAVID CAMERON FIRST ENTERED DOWNING STREET AS PM


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I confess that I was more than a little surprised when Ms McLean told delegates the Government is still targeting the building of 300,000 new homes a year. After all this is an issue that had threatened to split the Conservative Party in the past year and tensions were only cooled when Michael Gove agreed to scrap the need for local targets. This struck developers and commentators alike as a classic compromise, but also one that could fatally undermine all efforts to deliver the headline target. It seemed like NIMBY (not in my backyard) had morphed into BANANA (build absolutely nothing, anywhere near anyone). But it’s also possible the nervous Tory MPs in the Shires miscalculated a changing mood in the public, with many more voters expressing their support for more housebuilding.


In recent weeks, we’ve also heard of all sorts of diffi culties  from setbacs in modular building capacity, to councils and housing associations scaling back their development plans and volume builders accused of slowing building rates on their sites and delaying use of their land banks. The prospects are not looking great and that’s without even taking account of diffi culties in the wider economy. In her conference speech Rachel McLean appeared to pin a lot of her optimism on the sector’s recent track record for house building. She said that in the past year, annual housing supply was up 10% compared with the previous year, with more than 232,000 net additional homes delivered in 2021/22. She also complimented the social housing sector and promised them more support in her speech, but stopped well short of backing this up with any extra money. The House Builders Federation have


countered by warning the Government that its proposed Infrastructure Levy will have a detrimental impact particularly when coupled with increased regulation and a planning process which the HBF claims is grinding housing delivery to a halt! They calculate that changes to the National Planning Policy Framework are costing the country about 77,000 unbuilt homes.


More than 2.2 million homes have been delivered since April 2010 when David ameron fi rst entered owning treet as Prime Minister. This looks like an impressively large fi gure and yet we still have a huge and growing) housing crisis in the country as the country’s demographics continue to change and evolve.


There are more than 1.2 million people on local authority housing waiting lists and last year, just 6,554 social homes were built in England, 81% fewer than in 2010 and a fraction of the 90,000 new social homes needed every year according to the NHF and Crisis. Homeownership rates have fallen from 66% in 2010 to 64% last year. House prices appear to have plateaued but are still averaging something like 11 times average salary levels.


RISING LOAN COSTS


Economic problems and stubbornly high infl ation have combined to push up interest and mortgage rates to 15 year highs.


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