Why we need more homes

This content applies to England only.

For many years there has been a failure to build the number of new homes needed.

By 2001/02, the number of new homes being built had fallen to the lowest level since 1947.[1]

While building levels have since risen, they are still failing to keep pace with the number of new households being created each year as a result of demographic changes and more people choosing to live alone. There is also a chronic shortfall in the number of new affordable and social rented homes being built.

The affordability crisis

This shortage of homes has caused soaring house prices and a steady increase in the number of people unable to afford a decent place to live. Over the last 10 years, average house prices have increased by a staggering 200%, pricing many first-time buyers out of the market in most areas of the country. At the same time there is a chronic shortage of social rented housing, with nearly 1.7 million households on local authority housing waiting lists. [2]

In 2003, the Government commissioned economist Kate Barker to undertake a review of housing supply in the UK, to recommend what needed to be done to tackle Britain’s housing shortage. Her report concluded that there were a number of barriers preventing enough homes from being built to meet rising demand. These included the challenges associated with developing brownfield land and the constraints of existing infrastructure. The report recommended that these be tackled to reduce house price increases to more sustainable levels.

Shelter’s view

Shelter strongly supports the target set by the Government in 2007 in its Housing Green Paper to build three million additional homes in England by 2020. We also support the Government’s commitment to increase the number of social rented homes built to 45,000 per year in 2010/11, with an aspiration to reach 50,000 per year during the next Comprehensive Spending Review period.[3]

However, we believe that the Government needs to go even further than this to tackle the huge level of housing need that we currently face. In particular, we call upon the Government to set out ambitious targets for the number of social homes to be built between 2011 and 2020, and to make available the Government investment required to achieve these as part of the next spending round.

[1] Housing live tables, CLG, www.communities.gov.uk 

[2] Housing Strategy Statiscal Appendix Data 2007, Communities and Local Government, 2008. Annual Digest of CORE Data 2006/07 www.core.ac.uk.

[3] Homes for the Future: More Affordable, More Sustainable. CLG 2007