“A promise to build lots of homes makes good headlines around election time.”
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With the prospect of an early General Election on the cards, the followers of the two main parties are expecting a lot of housebuilding as a consequence – at least if you buy into the promises being made.
Labour Party Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell announced at his party’s annual conference last month that a pledge to build a million “genuinely affordable” homes would be part of its manifesto. On the Conservative Party side, plans have been in place for some time to build more homes. Earlier this year Liz Truss, then the chief secretary to the treasury, argued that a million homes should be built on greenbelt land, declaring “we just need to get more homes built.”
Politicians on all sides have been distracted by Brexit for the past few years, and some proper focus on the housing market is welcome. But not for the first time, it feels as though numbers are being plucked from thin air.
The Conservatives argue that since they came back to power in 2010, they’ve overseen 1.3 million new homes. But still, a target of a million new homes over the course of just one full parliamentary term is a huge, huge promise. Historically, recent governments have only managed to oversee about half a million new homes during their respective terms, and the situation has only worsened over the last few years.
Figures from the National House Building Council state that 159,617 new homes were registered with it in 2018, down from 160,396 in 2017. New home completions, meanwhile, stood at 149,480 in 2018, and 147,552 in 2017. Taking into account the timeframe involved in the construction of a new home, it’s going to need a radical change in policy to add even 100,000 a year to those numbers. And that’s assuming that all the registered permissions result in the homes being built at all.
The Conservative’s current plans to get to the magic ‘one million’ rely on tapping into ‘brownfield land’ – that is, land previously developed on that now stands unused and has the potential for redevelopment. Brownfield sites reserved for housing or left vacant are estimated to provide space for over 300,000 new developments. However, using brownfield land is nowhere near as straightforward as a press announcement makes it seem.
There are complications to be negotiated as to who owns the land, and the process of acquiring it for development. There are also question marks over the state the land has been left in. Should sites that have previously housed commercial enterprises which left the land contaminated be used for residential purposes? That’s a tough sell for a new home development. Is it even worth the investment to clear such land up for development in the first place?
Even if the land is in good condition, there’s no guarantee that housebuilders will want to actually build on it.
Local authorities oftentimes find themselves restricted by housebuilders who have acquired sites yet not yet started to build on them. In 2018, it was revealed that, on average, of the planning permissions granted for new builds, only half of the homes concerned have been built. That’s not a new reaction to the market either. This is something that’s remained the case for a full decade and counting.
A promise to build lots of homes makes good headlines around election time. Yet in contemporary times, no government has fully delivered on that. Whichever party prevails in the next election will need to address deeply ingrained underlying problems in the sector beyond the headline promises of millions of homes.
Until the government implements an effective solution to this problem as well as other notable obstacles holding back housebuilding – from the skills shortage to the lack of a social housing programme – then manifesto pledges of dramatic housebuilding seem unreachable.