The council housing expert

Ken Jones, head of housing strategy at the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham

Accommodating all these extra people means more than simply housing them. Basic public services and infrastructure will have to grow too. Much of the responsibility will fall to local authorities - some more than others.

If the UK population was to grow at the same rate over the next decade as is predicted in Barking and Dagenham, it would hit 72 million by 2020 - 10 years earlier than predicted by the Office of National Statistics.

Today 170,000 people call the east London borough home. The council estimates that figure will reach 200,000 by 2020. It’s a huge increase, but Barking and Dagenham’s head of housing strategy, Ken Jones, sees it foremost as an opportunity.

‘Provided the infrastructure is there - school places, health care and so on - then it will be something to celebrate,’ he says. ‘We can get the benefits of growth. We can get improved facilities. Maybe the bigger [retail] stores will be attracted in. It’s a glass half full.’

His optimism is grounded in the capacity for extra housing that his department has identified. Mr Jones says there is space in the borough for around 22,000 new homes, enough to house the predicted influx of new residents. But successful growth depends on more than just available land. Future levels of affordable housing grant from the Homes and Communities Agency and funding for social infrastructure from central government are crucial considerations.

‘You don’t have to be gazing too hard into a crystal ball to realise that pressures on public expenditure are going to be intense over the next 10 years,’ he says. ‘What’s going to have to happen is that the whole relationship between central and local government is going to be recast, no matter who is elected. There will be pressure for new ideas to come forward.’

Barking and Dagenham is already set to be the first local housing company to start developing, later this year. Now Mr Jones has one or two new ideas himself, such as borrowing against the extra tax revenue generated by the new inhabitants. Both the main parties have promised to give local authorities greater accountability and more powers of self-determination and Mr Jones hopes that these changes can happen. But will they be able to counter tensions over the borough’s growing population?

Of the borough’s 51 councillors, 12 represent the British National Party. The group’s success follows a local election campaign in 2006 that traded on myths about a growing immigrant population jumping queues for stretched local services.

As Mr Jones points out, much of the expected influx will come from inner east London, and many will be from black and minority ethnic populations. ‘They see it’s a good place to move to, schools are good, house prices are low,’ he explains. But that doesn’t necessarily mean a corresponding increase in disaffected locals. ‘The important thing for us is to ensure that the local people, whoever they may be, have the best opportunities to develop,’ Mr Jones says. ‘That means creating a range of housing to meet differing needs and aspirations, and to carry on the drive in upping skill levels in the borough and young people coming out of schools with better qualifications.’

As long as growth in public service capacity can keep pace with the increasing population, however, it’s possible the borough’s glass can remain half full.

The older people specialist

Bruce Moore, chief executive of Hanover Group

The UK’s population is not just growing, it’s growing older. According to the Office for National Statistics, around 30 per cent of the UK population is aged 50 or over.

By 2011, the average age of the UK population will exceed 40 for the first time. It is, in the words of Bruce Moore, chief executive of older people’s housing specialist Hanover Group, a ‘massive demographic timebomb’.

But what does this mean for the provision of housing and services to older people in the future? And what does the growth in the general population mean for our older citizens?

It doesn’t look like the new inhabitants’ contributions to the tax revenues are going to be much help. The number of citizens over the age of 75 is expected to rise by 70 per cent over the next 15 years, far outstripping any growth in the general population. As far as the future provision of care and support goes, it seems, the facts are inescapable - the current system is unsustainable.

‘We need to go through some major changes within the older people’s housing sector in terms of how we provide our services,’ says Mr Moore. ‘We can’t afford to keep providing this comprehensive package of support for people on a standardised basis.’

He’s another optimist at heart, however. People might be living longer, but they are staying healthier for longer too. The standardised support model - based, as he puts it, on the erroneous assumption that people need care and support as soon as they retire - will have to make way for a system based on choice and self-funding.

‘This sense that there is going to be some pot of money - everyone is starting to realise that it’s not going to be like that,’ Mr Moore explains. ‘It’s about prioritising and making choices about what is important.’

It’s not all bad news. Mr Moore also believes that treating all older people the same is outdated and ageist - a paradigm that changing demographics will necessarily shift.

‘Every cloud has a silver lining. The pressure that this is going to create on the economy will force us to have a new, constructive way we see older people. It will give us the means to tackle this ageist attitude and create a much more positive dynamic.’

The sceptical academic

Paul Cheshire, professor of economic geography, London School of Economics

The population is booming. House building starts, meanwhile, have fallen drastically over the past three years (Inside Housing, 22 May).

Is the equation as simple as it sounds? More and more people crammed into an already crowded island, while demand for housing - and therefore house prices - keeps on rising?

Not quite, says Paul Cheshire, emeritus professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics.

‘First, we should take population projections with a healthy dose of salt,’ he says. ‘We have been grotesquely over-exercised by household projections, which are anyway historically extremely inaccurate… and even if they were true, they wouldn’t have much influence on housing demand.’

Instead, he argues in a new policy paper published earlier this month, the number of households in an area is not the primary driver of housing demand - not by a long way.

‘We tend to get our knickers in a twist about population numbers, whereas we totally ignore the real driving force of rising real incomes,’ he explains. ‘It’s that which has triggered these instabilities in the housing market and which makes housing progressively more unaffordable, as not more and more people but more and more income chases a relatively limited amount of total housing space.’

Professor Cheshire’s paper argues that the planning system’s reliance on a particular area’s estimated growth in household numbers is misplaced. Rather, it is rising levels of income chasing limited amounts of living space; the more we earn, the more space we want. Coupled to national policies around urban containment - building on brownfield and off green belt - this means the demand for housing in this country will remain high and volatile, as will its affordability. The problem still exists, but it turns out the population boom doesn’t have much to do with it after all.

‘It’s reassuring in terms of the scare story at the moment,’ he concludes. ‘But in terms of long-term policy and the provision of land for housing, it is extremely unreassuring.’

Number of completed new homes

Annual population growth rate

Number of people aged 85 and over in the UK

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