Select committee: Built Environment Committee
Conclusion 81
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 Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research said that between one quarter and one third of older people are consistently found to express interest in moving to a new house, but only 3.4% of older adults do so and most of them move within mainstream housing, rather than into specialised housing for older people. While this implies that there is “not currently huge demand for specialised housing options”, this low number of moves may be “constrained by the low supply of such homes and poor distribution throughout the country, as well as demand-side barriers. These figures suggest that moving to a new house may be popular in theory, but that older people are deterred from making such moves in practice.” 149
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".