Select committee: Built Environment Committee
Recommendation 69
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 ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
As of March 2021, 95,450 families had been placed into temporary accommodation by local authorities. 129 There were 1,187,641 households on local authority housing waiting lists in 2021. 130 Research for the National Housing Federation and Crisis in 2018 identified a need for 145,000 new affordable homes per year, of which 90,000 for the next 15 years should be for social rent, 30,000 for affordable rent and 25,000 shared ownership homes. 131 These estimates are based on an analysis of the backlog of housing need at that time (e.g. overcrowded households, those facing serious affordability problems, homeless households in unsuitable accommodation), combined with projections of household growth. The research concluded that a subsidy of around £14.6 billion per year over 10 years would be required to build the new social rented homes. 132 In July 2020, the Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Select Committee in its report Building more social housing concluded that the Government should introduce a large-scale social housebuilding programme. 133
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".