Housing - State of the Nation inquiry
Closed
What the inquiry looked at
“The need for housing in England has in recent years grown faster than its supply, and housebuilding needs to increase across the country according to the National Audit Office (NAO). The recent report from the NAO included an overview of the housing market in England, the Department for Communities and Local Government's housing strategy and the overall housing policy landscape. Total estimated government spending on housing in England was approximately £28 billion in 2015–16. The most significant element of this is housing benefit. In 2015–16 there were 4.1 million claimants in England, costing around £20.9 billion. Two of the Department's four strategic objectives for this Parliament are focused on housing: increasing home ownership, and increasing the supply of homes, with an ambition of delivering a million new homes in England by 2020. National Audit Office report According to the NAO, housebuilding has not kept pace with need, and this is particularly acute in London. Projections suggest there will be at least 227,000 new households formed each year between 2011 and 2021. This is substantially higher than the annual average of 166,000 extra homes in England over the last 10 years. Delivery of the government's million new homes ambition by 2020 will require 174,000 net additions each year. The Department measures new homes as net additions; this is not only newly-built homes, but also includes converted properties. The Department is reliant on the market to achieve its housing objectives and it is not yet clear what impact the result of the referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union will have on the market. For example, despite early indications of a slowdown immediately after the referendum result, more recent evidence points to modest increases in numbers of sales being agreed in England. Housing has become more affordable for existing homeowners, with the proportion of owner-occupiers who spend at least a quarter of their disposable income on housing falling from 40% to 19% of people with a mortgage. By contrast, housing has become less affordable for first-time buyers, and social housing rents have been increasing faster than earnings since 2001–2.”
The committee's words, from the inquiry page on parliament.uk ↗.
What it found
The number of homes built in England has lagged behind demand for housing for decades. The effects of this long-running shortfall in housing reveal themselves in the growing barriers people face in getting on the property ladder, or simply affording their rent. The human costs are emphasised by the growing problem of homelessness, with the number of families living in temporary accommodation rising from 50,000 in 2011–12 to 72,000 in 2015–16. Almost 120,000 children in England live in temporary accommodation today.
The Department for Communities and Local Government (the Department) has an ambition to deliver 1 million new homes over the five years of this Parliament. But despite acknowledging that the housing market in England is “broken”, it remains dependent on the existing market, which is dominated by a handful of private developers, to realise its ambition. Even if this is achieved, the Department acknowledges that it will not come close to meeting the actual level of housing need, so problems of affordability and homelessness are likely to persist for years to come. The Department’s lack of ambition on such a fundamental issue is matched by a lack of information, in particular on the impacts and value for money of the roughly £21 billion the government spends each year on housing benefit. The Department has recently published a White Paper outlining proposals for accelerating housebuilding, and we look forward to monitoring the development of its programmes.
What the government said
No government response is linked to this report.
How the inquiry ran
Each dot is a dated item listed on this page, from the inquiry's opening on 17 January 2017 to 6 December 2017.
- Oral evidence 22 Feb 2017
- Report 28 Apr 2017
- Correspondence 6 Dec 2017
What it recommended
The committee's recommendations are not listed here yet. Read them in 63rd Report - Housing: State of the Nation ↗ on parliament.uk.
Evidence
Oral evidence sessions 1
- 22 Feb 2017No witnesses recordedparliament.uk ↗