Britain needs 200,000 new homes a year. Is Gordon Brown going to build them in
your backyard? As the former Chancellor of the Exchequer prepares to move
into 10 Downing Street on Wednesday, that is the question in the mind of
every housebuilder in the country.
The Prime Minister in waiting has already signalled his intention to overhaul
the planning system, build five new eco-towns and create a “homeowning
democracy”. But he must implement these policies fast if he is to convince
desperate first-time buyers, squeezed homeowners and an increasingly jaded
construction industry that he is a man of action as well as of words. “Every
politician in the past 10 to 15 years has said that he will address housing
issues,” says Stewart Baseley, executive chairman of the Home Builders
Federation (HBF). “The time for talk is over. It is time to take action.”
Britain is facing a shortage of 60,000 homes a year, according to the HBF. A
decade of debate since Labour came to power means that there is now a
consensus that we need more houses. Even green campaigners now concede that
this is so. What we still can not agree on is what type of properties these
should be and where to put them. This is what Brown will have to decide.
Builders claim that only 10 per cent of land in Britain is being developed.
They argue that there is no shortage of land, only a shortage of planning
permission, and that more land needs to be made available if we are to meet
the Government’s target of building at least 200,000 new homes a year by
2016.
Last year, 160,000 new houses and flats were built. At the same time, more
than 220,000 new households were formed. The Government also estimates that
the number of households will continue to rise at a rate of 223,000 a year
until 2029.
Aware that the provision of new homes was failing to keep up with the level of
new households, the Government suggested four main growth areas for housing
— Thames Gateway, Milton Keynes & South Midlands,
London-Stansted-Cambridge-Peterborough, and Ashford — in its sustainable
communities plan of 2003. It is also supporting 29 new growth points across
the country; these involve new homes, new jobs, town-centre regeneration and
higher design and environmental standards.
Government policy has produced mixed results so far. Although there has been a
steady rise in home building each year since 2001 (when figures dipped to
the lowest level since the Second World War), critics say that too many
flats are being built at the expense of family houses. In the late 1990s
flats accounted for about 15 per cent of new properties. The latest figures
show that flats make up 45 per cent of all new residences built.
Meanwhile, properties are becoming smaller as developers cram more units into
the tiniest of spaces, partly to boost profits and partly to satisfy
government guidelines to increase building density. Since 2004 new
developments have had an average density of 40 homes per hectare, compared
with 25 homes per hectare in 2001. The building frenzy led to a glut of
flats in some places and to calls from MPs to increase the building of
houses to redress the balance.
The government guidelines on building density were subsequently relaxed last
November to give local authorities greater flexibility over what homes to
put where according to local need and demand. Builders are now free to
construct more houses.
Flats, however, encroach less on the environment than a sprawl of suburban
semis. Although the number of new properties has been rising steadily, the
amount of land developed dropped by 35 per cent between 1997 and 2004.
Builders developed only 8,995 acres of land in 2004 compared with 13,912
acres in 1997. But this trend is likely to be reversed if we start building
more houses, fuelling the complaints that we are “concreting over the
countryside”.
Gordon Brown has already upset environmentalists with proposals to liberalise
the planning system. Last month’s planning White Paper placed a strong
emphasis on economic development with its aims to streamline the planning
process to cut delays to much-needed housing schemes.
But Marina Pacheco, head of planning for the Campaign to Protect Rural England
(CPRE), said that that the proposals overlooked the needs of schools,
hospitals, transport and the environment. “Planning is an holistic exercise
that can’t be looked at in one dimension,” she says.
Brown’s plans to boost environmentally sound building by delivering five new
eco-towns and increasing the number of carbon-neutral homes by 2016 has left
the CPRE equally cold because of the lack of detail provided. “We are not
opposed to the idea but it is a drop in the ocean,” Pacheco says. “Brown
talks a lot about green issues but we never see the nuts and bolts that are
needed to make this vision happen.”
The CPRE is right to be sceptical. Eco-friendly building is not as easy as it
looks. The builders who embarked on a much earlier environmentally conscious
programme, the sustainable communities programme spearheaded by John
Prescott back in 1997, discovered that their ambitious plans could easily be
scuppered by issues such as the difficulty of sourcing sufficiently green
building materials (in particular, windows). If the Millennium Communities
Programme has taught us anything, it is that building “green” on brownfield
sites takes a lot longer and costs a lot more. Building work on the Milton
Keynes scheme, one of the seven projects around the country, will finally
start this year, although the site was allocated in 2000. The
state-of-the-art homes in the programme also cost between £3,000 and £10,000
more to build than the average home.
The real rub for developers, though, is that housebuyers are not prepared to
pay that much extra for a greener home. Builders such as Taylor Woodrow
taking part in the programme readily admit that it makes little sense to
adopt the techniques learnt on the project to build on other sites where
they can not charge an appropriate premium.
However, the biggest obstacle in Brown’s way is not Nimbyism, the green lobby
or even the builders but the very economy he put in place as Chancellor of
the Exchequer. The strength of the property market over the past few years
has given a boost to building in a way that no government policy ever could.
Developers were prepared to put up with delays in planning and stringent
demands for social housing to be built alongside private homes because
rising prices meant that they could still make a profit. But the housing
market is slowing down, and homeowners are reluctant to move because stamp
duty is too high. Moreover, potential first-time buyers continue to be
priced out of the market. And, as property prices stagnate, there is less
incentive for landowners to sell their land for development.
To compound the problem, Richard Donnell, head of research at the property
data company Hometrack, believes that as construction companies fight to
stay competitive in a tougher economic environment, we are likely to see a
string of mergers in the building industry that will lead to a reduction in
the number of new homes being built.
“The Treasury under Brown has done a lot to try to understand the housing
market,” Donnell says. “But policy is always behind the market. There is
every chance of output declining over the next five years.”
Building houses has got nothing to do with Brown or Prescott's sense of obligation to the homeless.
If it did they would do away with the real causes of the shortage which are immigration and all forms of property spivvery such as exemplified by the likes of Michael Meacher and Prescott's own son.
The real motivator is the fact that Britain has no other industry and this is the only way for the banks to magic up new money.
Never mind the fact that this money consists entirely of debt which will not be paid back for another 50 years if at all.
Most of these houses will be paid for by the taxpayer anyway but what will the taxpayer be doing for a living anyway, building more houses?
There is another very tragic side to this which is virtually ignored - the wholesale mutilation of our scenery. But Labour don't get where they are through any sense of heritage or aesthetics.
P.E.Carter, Stratford on Avon, U.K.
If it was a real housings crisis we would see tent cities cropping up.
Its a 'I want my perfect house, but can't afford it' crisis.
There's plenty of 2-3 bedroom terraces available in outer Manchester, but nooooo, I want my little house in a little estate with its little drive and bay windows.
But it doesn't really bother me.
Miles of beautiful countryside just minutes from the door. Keep the London spawl going.
Its the decent countryside we need saving like the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, Scotland, Wales and the SW that we need protecting.... not the flat, 'Ooo,-I've-found-an-acre-of-countryside-here' SE ;-)
But seriously... There's so much brownfield space to build on. Look at the old mining communities, the old industrial sites surrounding the cities etc. There are rows of houses laying empty in Liverpool and other industrial towns of the north.
Or are we all to posh to live there, so lets cry about a housing shortage and no space.
Jamie, big house for little cash, Halifax, West Yorkshire
Has any body looked at it the other way we have enough homes
Its just we have to many people now living in the UK.
Sort this out first before we cover are green and pleasant land.
Burrowswood, George Town, Cayman Islands
Perhaps the problem could be addressed in the context of examining whether the government is acting in the best interests of this nation by continuing to pursue an open door immigration policy. If there is a shortage of places to live why exacerbate the problem by adding to the shortage? While the government's immigration policy may be suppressing wages and keeping house prices inflating to maintain Brown's "miracle economy" it does seem that few will thank him when the inevitable crash that is underway in the US, Spain, Ireland begins in earnest in this country. Brown can keep house prices inflating for only so long before they simply become unaffordable for a significant minority . This is already happening as evidenced by rising bankruptcies and repossessions and tightening credit in the wake of international sub-prime problems and the moves in the bond market in reaction to heightened risk. All in all, Brown has created quite a mess for someone to clear up
Real Istbear, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire
How could we have got to the point where we are short of 60,000 homes a year? Doesn't the government have a "Minister of Housing"? You would imagine that ensuring there are enough homes for the population would in some way come under their remit?
Matt ODonnell, London, UK
I agree with David, the immigration numbers are at nearly 400,000 a year which is causing the demand for housing to rise. Time to sort out immigration before we start digging up the countryside.
Chris , Bristol,
How about controlling immigration instead ?
If we said people have to work for 5 years before they can get any benefits or social housing we would need a lot less houses in this country.
David , london, UK
UK land mass is about 60 million acres so developing 9,000-13,000 acres per year is hardly "concreting over the countryside". Rather it's about 0.02% of all land. So if we did this for 50 years we'd use about 1% of UK total land mass.
Jon Cass, Warwick, England