Ahead of the autumn budget and upcoming spending review, The Housing Forum is calling for a £4bn Housing Accelerator Fund to build 60,000 new affordable rented homes, which its claims could “more than halve homelessness” over three years.
“After years of inflation, it is clear that more needs to be done to make new housing more financially viable,” director of policy and public affairs at The Housing Forum, Anna Clarke, said.
“There are things which the housing sector can do, like standardising designs and finding efficiencies in construction, but ultimately leadership must come from a national level.
“The government must do what they can in the short term to bring down costs, including ensuring a stable policy environment, provide financial certainty for social landlords looking to deliver new homes, and lead the way in researching ways to reduce the cost of building new homes.”
Mash Hala, managing director at construction consultancy John Rowan and Partners added that “the last two or three years have been challenging to navigate” for the industry.
“The market needs investment and access to different funding options, not only to meet the government’s housing targets but to ensure the development of sustainable homes for all,” Hala said.
The Labour government has pledged to build 1.5 million homes – setting local authorities the goal of building 370,000 homes in a year – in order to end the housing crisis, with housing secretary Angela Rayner also calling for a “council house revolution” in July.
A significant increase in social housing is needed to end a housing crisis that has seen house prices soar beyond earnings, private rents hit new heights and a record number of families homeless and living in temporary accommodation.
The think-tank Resolution Foundation previously told Big Issue that a reliance on private sector house-building will not be enough to reach 1.5 million homes, and that there must be “greater public investment in affordable housing” in order to hit the government’s targets.
“Giving local housing targets more teeth and opening up more land for development should help to boost housing supply, as long as the government holds its nerve against local opposition,” Camron Aref-Adib, researcher at the Resolution Foundation, said.
“But while these reforms are necessary, they are not sufficient, as they rely too much on private sector delivery. If the government wants to build the 1.5 million more homes that Britain needs, there’s no alternative to direct intervention via greater public investment in affordable housing. That’s the only way Britain has built at scale in the past, and it’s crucial to delivering in the future too.”
Housing charity Shelter has also underlined the need for house-building targets, with 90,000 social rent homes reportedly needed every year for the next decade to tackle the housing crisis.
Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter said: “We need bold and ambitious action to tackle the housing emergency head on, so it’s promising to see the government take steps in the right direction.
“For too long, housing has been neglected, under regulated and underfunded while generation after generation face the consequences.”
Neate added: “Making sure that homes are safe and fit for the future is vital, but the government will never succeed in giving everyone a decent home until it invests in the genuinely affordable social homes this country needs. That’s why it must set a clear target for social rent homes to end the housing emergency for good.”
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