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The UK is facing an urgent need for new and affordable housing across the country caused by an increasing population and lack of new builds.
Housing supply issues have a significant effect on quality of living for renters, and potential renters, across the country. Lack of suitable housing can lead to:
- Overcrowding in houses as people work together to save costs
- Unstable living circumstances caused by increasing numbers of landlords selling up, or not being able to secure long-term rentals
- Increase in homelessness
- Impaired labour mobility
According to research by the National Housing Federation, to minimise this crisis the UK must build an estimated 340,000 per year, with 145,000 fitting into the affordable housing category.
Additionally, it comes as no surprise that the supply challenges are creating a competitive housing landscape, raising prices and making it increasingly difficult for first time buyers to enter the market. In August 2012, the average house price in England was £180,000, since then, house prices have increased by an astonishing 76%.
As part of the Renters Reform white paper, the UK government pledged to build 300,000 new houses per year to work towards this goal.
Housing targets scrapped
Nearly 60 conservative rebels pledged to back-up plans to ban mandatory housing targets. Rishi Sunak has responded to this by easing measures and setting them as “advisory” instead of mandatory.
In response to the surprising shift, Michael Gove stated “there is no truly objective way of calculating how many new homes are needed in an area” but the “plan-making process for housing has to start with a number”.
Looking back to when Rishi became Prime Minister in October, there were already doubts surrounding these housing targets. In October (2022) statements, Rishi had claimed that he “did not believe in arbitrary, top-down numbers”. Whilst committed to building more suitable homes across the country the new Prime Minister doubted the achievability and accuracy of the targets.
The conservative rebels took issue with the effects the targets might have on specific constituencies, with concerns of over-building in more rural areas. The government has claimed that they will now consult on how the new guidelines can take local density into account.
Whilst housing targets of 300,000 new homes per year will be advisory and not mandatory, the Government has stated their commitment to plan high numbers of new builds across the country. Additionally, new measures are being put in place to better control the short-term letting market in the hopes that this can create opportunities for higher numbers of suitable residential homes.
