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Government must get their act together as Tories ‘off track’ on 300,000 homes a year target

By 2 August 2019September 8th, 2022No Comments

At the current rate of growth in new homes built a year it will take the Government 13 years until 300,000 homes are built annually in England, nearly double the time that Ministers have pledged. 

They promised to hit their target in 7 years, yet new analysis shows it will take 6 years longer than promised.

In the November Budget 2017, the Chancellor promised that by the middle of the next decade we’d be building 300,000 homes a year.

Over the last 5 years the average year on year increase in number of homes built has been 11,283.

From the baseline of 169,770 new homes built in 2018-19 the last year for such figures, it will take until 2030-31 to reach over 300,000 homes built (305,160).

The failure to build the new homes needed has hit the hopes of local people too. In Portsmouth there have been an average of 354 homes built per year (taken from a 5 year average from 2014-2019) . This compares to 810 the year before the financial crisis.

The research comes as a new Channel Four series presented by George Clarke is shining a spotlight on the country’s housing crisis.

TV Presenter George Clarke said:

“Our country desperately needs new council houses to be built in greater numbers and to better standards so our housing stock will stand the test of time.

It’s a national emergency and you, me, everyone – need to tell the government to get their act together”.

Portsmouth South MP, Stephen Morgan said:

“This is more worrying evidence of a housing crisis that Tory Ministers are failing to fix nationally, and Lib Dems locally.

After nine years of failure in Government, housebuilding is still lower than under Labour and it will take nearly twice as long as Tory Ministers promised to hit their own target.

Rather than cutting back on new investment in affordable homes, the Government should back Labour’s plans to invest to build a million new genuinely affordable homes, including the biggest council housebuilding programme in nearly forty years. That’s what Portsmouth families and the generations to come deserve.”

The Government’s record on housebuilding is at the heart of their nine years of failure. Total housebuilding has not recovered to the level it was under Labour before the global financial crisis and recession. Whilst the last two years have seen the lowest number of new social rented homes built since the Second World War.

Mr Morgan added:

“With over 120,000 children recorded as homeless in temporary accommodation, an increase of 70% since 2010, and rough sleeping more than doubled since 2010, the Tories record in tackling our nation’s housing crisis is one of absolute failure”.

Labour plans to build a million new affordable homes over a decade with the biggest council house building programme for nearly 40 years.

The party has also set out help for those who want to buy their own home, including discounted FirstBuy homes for first-time buyers, and first dibs for first-time buyers on new homes built in their area.