Select committee: Built Environment Committee
Conclusion 49
1st Report - Meeting housing demand
Published 10 Jan 2022
Built Environment Committee Meeting the UK’s housing demand All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The Home Builders Federation told us that these schemes to support home ownership “improved visibility of effective demand” and “led to a sustained period of record investment in land and labour for future housing delivery, therefore increasing supply”. 89 However, Professor Christian Hilber, Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science, highlighted analysis which shows that “demand-side housing policies (such as the Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme) may increase housing construction, but only in locations where it is comparably easy to add new housing supply (such as near the English/Welsh border)”. He added that in areas where “jobs are located and housing is severely supply constrained (such as in Greater London)” the scheme has “led to a substantive increase in house prices, with no statistically significant effect on construction numbers.” 90 The Affordable Housing Commission concluded in March 2020 that “many” affordable for-sale and rent products “are clearly unaffordable to those on mid to lower incomes.” 91
From: Built Environment Committee, 1st Report - Meeting housing demand, 10 January 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 28 March 2022 (deadline 10 March 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government welcomes the Committee's report and says it is "taking action on a number of the issues identified", agreeing with some recommendations while disagreeing with others, including on home ownership schemes and the Apprenticeship Levy.
- It "disagrees with the report's assessment that homeownership schemes do not provide good value for money", citing independent evaluations and its own evaluation of Help to Buy.
- On older people's housing, it is launching a new taskforce "this year", chaired by the Minister for Housing, to look at better choice, quality and security of housing.
- It does "not intend to set out a proportion" of Affordable Homes Programme funding for social housing, though "around half" of the affordable homes are to be for social and affordable rent.
- On the Apprenticeship Levy it says it has "no plans to review" it. On planning fees it is "exploring options" to increase them, and on local plans it will make an announcement "in due course".