Government plans for 200,000 new homes 'not enough'

Government plans for 200,000 new homes each year by 2016 may not meet the need for new affordable housing, the chairwoman of an influential select committee warned today.

Labour's Dr Phyllis Starkey, said it was "indisputable" that the rate of housebuilding had fallen while growth in households was increasing.

Dr Starkey was opening a Commons debate on affordable housing, in which she said that changing demography, increases in single person households and shortages in family and social rented housing were impacting on the availability of cheap homes.

Her Communities and Local Government Committee report, published earlier this year, calls on the Government to increase the numbers of affordable homes.

It said the backlog in the provision of social rented housing, rising aspirations for home ownership and the UK's ageing population were putting demands on housing supply.

Dr Starkey told MPs: "It is indisputable that over the last 15 years the annual rate of housebuilding has fallen whilst the rate of household growth has increased.

"There has been an upturn in 2005 on the numbers of houses built to 160,000...but there is clearly still a need for further increases."

She added that given that the latest estimates of household growth were higher than before "the committee questioned whether  the Government's target for an extra 200,000 houses a year by 2016 was actually enough".

For the Liberal Democrats, Andrew Stunell said the report showed that "things were going from bad to worse" and Government policy was "not yet fit for purpose."

Labour former Cabinet minister Andrew Smith (Oxford E) backed the committee's call for more social rented housing to make up for the shortfall in supply.

He raised the "plight of families with children already in social housing but stuck in cramped maisonettes and flats who have to wait years for a transfer to a house with a garden".

Mr Smith said: "These are hard-working families, paying their rent, and they are stuck for an unacceptably long time in unsatisfactory accommodation."

Labour's Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington North) said there was a "crisis" in social housing.

The fall in numbers of social homes was making community tensions worse and a "radical" solution was needed.

In her own constituency, she said: "The situation on the ground is not only bad but deteriorating."

Over the last two weeks, she said, three different families of six people had come to her as they were each sharing a one-bedroom flat.

"You can imagine the pressures that puts on people, the risk of those children growing up where they cannot study and have no privacy.

"Any health problem will spread throughout the household like wildfire."

"This situation is utterly intolerable."

The Blairs were accused of helping fuel the rise in house prices over their controversial purchase of flats in Bristol.

Liberal Democrat Paul Holmes (Chesterfield) said the lack of affordable housing to buy or rent was an "appalling problem".

He said private rents were forced up by a shortage of housing stock, and some people were being "exploited" by unscrupulous landlords.

Taking a swipe at the Blairs' purchase of two flats in Bristol, he
added: "Equally you get people buying second, third or fourth properties to rent as an investment.

"Indeed, the Prime Minister bought two or three flats in Bristol, I seem to recall, for precisely that purpose, and that also drives up prices on the property market."

He said the Labour Government's record on social housing was worse than the Conservatives.

Mr Holmes said: "The lack of social housing is down to a failure to build in recent years. This Government, unbelievably, has a worse record than the one it replaced in terms of building social housing.

"For every three properties that are sold under Right to Buy only one is built to replace those, leaving a big void in the market."

Mr Holmes added: "Council house waiting lists, just within the past five or six years, have soared from one million to one-and-a-half million.
That has a huge effect on both the price of housing at all levels and the human cost on individuals.

"It puts pressure on the market price, both to rent and to buy."

For the Tories, Michael Gove said the party supported affordable housing.

He added: "We are the party of increasing housing supply and helping the vulnerable."

Housing supply had to be increased "because projected future household growth outstrips the growth in new housing completion".

He said the number of people in temporary accommodation was double what it was in 1997 - 94,000 compared to 41,000 then.

He attacked the Government's record on affordable homes claiming that according to written answers from ministers, the number of homes sold under the "Social Homebuy" scheme in September was just one. That had increased "dramatically" to five in October despite £15 million being allocated to the scheme.

He said: "Never in the field of housebuilding has so much been spent so badly in order to provide ownership for so few."

Housing Minister Yvette Cooper said the report raised "serious issues".

She said: "Since 1997 we have had low mortgage rates compared to the decades past, greater economic stability in contrast to the housing market crashes of the past.

"That has made it possible for far more people to enter home ownership and to stay in home ownership.

"But as the report is also clear we do face serious pressures from rising house prices across the country and a serious underlying need to build more new homes for the future."

She later challenged the Tories on how many homes they thought should be built.

Mr Gove said: "I think that Miss Barker's estimate of 200,000 is a fair estimate of the level of potential future housing need but I would not like our ambitions to be limited by that target."

Ms Cooper said homes had to be built to much higher environmental standards and promised a new code and planning guidance next week.

She said a timetable would be set to bring the code's standards into building regulations to meet the target set by the Chancellor for zero carbon homes within 10 years.

Ms Cooper said she agreed with the committee that more homes did need to be built.

The Government will have invested £40 billion by 2010 in improving council homes, which had been left in a "shocking state of disrepair" by the Tories.

"We could have seen a hefty chunk of that £40 billion going into new social housing but for the shocking legacy of the 1980s and 1990s under the Tories."

The debate ended without a vote.

Copyright Press Association 2006.