Select committee: Built Environment Committee
Conclusion 54
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 Affordable Housing Commission noted that “The private rented sector has grown, from housing 12% of people in the lower half of income distribution in 2000, to 22% in 2017”, which suggests that “as the social housing sector has shrunk, many people have made homes in the private sector, where housing is often less suited to tenants with complex needs.” 101 Research from 2017 found that four in ten council homes sold through Right-to-Buy were now in the private rented sector—with the highest proportion being 70.6% in Milton Keynes. 102 Dr Anna Minton, Reader at the School of Architecture, University of East London, said: “It has long been the case that as we moved from a policy of moving social housing tenants or council housing tenants into the private rented sector, housing benefit would pay their rents.” However, “the local housing allowance no longer covers rents in expensive parts of the country.” She suggested that this was “negative for the benefit bill” which is “soaring” and “high rents are putting upward inflationary pressures on the private rented market as a whole.” 103 Overall housing benefit spending in 2018/19 was £23.4 billion, with 4.6 million recipients paid an average of £5,035 each. 104
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".