Building slump leaves ‘chronic’ housing shortage
England and Wales face a ‘chronic’ shortage of housing as building figures drop to the lowest level since 1923, campaigners have warned.
The National Housing Federation has calculated 122,700 homes will be built between April 2009 and March 2010, the lowest total for a non-war year since 86,000 were built in 1923/24.
The umbrella body for housing associations is warning the slump could leave ‘millions of people trapped in overcrowded and substandard housing for a generation to come’.
The low building figures for 2009/10 have been caused by a lack of private development, and are down on 140,950 built in 2008/09 and 176,660 in 2007/08.
The NHF is calling for the three main political parties to go into the forthcoming general election with a pledge to ring fence investment in housing, giving it the same protection as spending on health, education and policing.
Chief executive David Orr said: ‘The delivery of new homes this year has been propped up by housing associations, who have built just under half the total number – with the aid of record levels of public investment and more flexible government grants via the Home and Communities Agency.
‘With record housing waiting lists and overcrowding reaching epidemic proportions in many places across the country, the need for more affordable housing has never been greater.’
Shadow housing minister Grant Shapps responded to the NHF figures by criticising the record of the Labour government.
‘We need a new way to get this country building which is why Conservatives will scrap Labour’s useless top-down housing targets and instead work with communities to create the homes that this country so desperately needs,’ he said.
Liberal Democrat housing spokesperson Sarah Teather said the shortage of affordable housing is ‘the legacy of decades of underinvestment and neglect by consecutive Tory and Labour governments’.
She added: ‘The housing shortage is one of the biggest crises facing Britain today and tackling it must be a priority of any future government.’
A spokesperson for the Communities and Local Government department said: ‘Despite the recession this government has clearly demonstrated its commitment to support house building through an extra £1.5 billion investment in the Housing Pledge and boosting support for first time buyers in the pre-Budget report.
‘The power of this government investment means a total £7.5 billion for housing over this year and next is already kick-starting house building, safeguarding construction jobs and will deliver more than 112,000 new homes across the country to tackle the shortage of affordable housing and ease overcrowding.
‘Housing minister John Healey has made clear many times that this commitment to housing by the government is long term.’
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