Affordable housing target cut despite £1.5bn investment
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The government has dropped its affordable house building targets from a previous pledge of 70,000 a year to about 55,000 a year in the next two years, despite the £1.5 billion boost to building programmes.
A spokesman for the Communities and Local Government department said the government was now paying ‘more of the cost per house’ due to the huge reduction in Section 106 agreements and other forms of private investment.
He said the extra £1.5 billion was made available to ‘plug the gap’ and boost affordable house building.
The government now expects to complete 55,500 affordable homes under the National Affordable Housing Programme in this financial year and 56,450 in 2010/11.
This makes up the 110,000 homes prime minister Gordon Brown said would be built over two years, when he announced the £1.5 billion funding package last month.
Only about 13,500 a year will be for social rent, whereas the government had expected to deliver 45,000 homes for this purpose out of the 70,000 total.
The CLG refused to provide a regional breakdown of the reduced targets, which have been approved by the Homes and Communities Agency and are awaiting ministerial sign-off.
In London, the mayor’s housing advisor Richard Blakeway said the capital’s NAHP target had been reduced from 44,000 to 37,000 in the 2008 to 2011 period, which would take 6,000 homes off the mayor’s target to build 50,000 affordable homes in total.
Mr Blakeway wrote to the Communities and Local Government department this week, stating the target revisions were ‘deeply concerning’.
‘It is extraordinary for the prime minister to announce an expansion to the new affordable housing programme, when the minister for housing and planning is considering contracting the current programme,’ he said.
He also called for the £1.5 billion to be distributed regionally, as this would allow London to hit its target to build 50,000 affordable homes.
Richard St John Williams, housing and regeneration partner at law firm Cobbetts LLP, said: ‘The news that the government will miss its affordable homes target comes as no surprise, especially to people “on the ground” looking to deliver the government’s housing targets.
’However, this appears to be the first occasion that the government itself – with its own figures – has openly conceded that the target is unachievable.’
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