Government to target 100 'low supply areas'

Gavin Barwell, the housing minister, last night pledged to focus on local authority areas where population growth is far outstripping new housing. The government plans to work more intensively with these councils to pinpoint the reasons for the shortfall and to help them improve supply.

Speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, Mr Barwell said the housing crisis was not a “national problem”, but an issue concentrated in particular areas of the country.

He said: “One of the things that is lodged in my mind… is a map that one of my officials showed me which looks at household growth and how many homes we have [in the pipeline]. What that shows very clearly is this is not a national problem.

“There are parts of the country where we are building exactly what we need to build. There are parts of the country where we’re a bit behind and there are parts of the country where we are massively behind at the moment. There’s about 100 out of 300-and-something planning authorities where this problem is essentially concentrated and my job is to work with those places and find out what is happening, and work with them to deliver [an improvement].”

Earlier this week, the government announced £3bn of loan finance and other measures to speed up the rate of housebuilding, with chancellor Philip Hammond placing an emphasis on increasing supply in his keynote speech at the conference on Monday.

Sector bodies have welcomed the government announcements, hopeful of a shift in emphasis from homeownership to overall supply.