Howard Chapman, Buildingtalk Editor, recommends watching tonight’s C4 documentary that will challenge the UK’s house-building industry and explain why radical reform is the only solution to the housing crisis.
Watch ‘Britain’s Homebuilding Scandal’ on Channel 4 to find out why too few houses are being built in the UK.
Liam Halligan looks at how developers deliberately hold back land to maximise profits and asks if radical reform is the only solution to Britain’s housing crisis Britain’s
Back in the 1980s, the last time the UK built 250,000 houses in a year, small and medium-sized builders built more than two thirds of new builds but they now build less than quarter of new homes.
Meanwhile the big housebuilders continue to make big profits.
Since the 1960’s, UK housebuilding has fallen short of the 250k new homes needed each year to meet the natural growth of population and changes in household formation.
During the Thatcher years, fewer council houses were built, and house building has been in serious decline ever since, falling under every prime minister from John Major onwards, to just 133k new homes built across the UK in 2013, the lowest peacetime total since the 1926 general strike. The latest data shows annual house building on the rise at least. But at 152k, it is still very low by historic standards and way short of the demand for homes.
Housing minister Gavin Barwell says the Government is committed to finding ways to boost self build homes to more than 20,000 a year. However doubling the number of self-builds will not the meet the need.
Sajid Javid, MP for Bromsgrove (the home of Buildingtalk) and Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government, has pledged to break the housebuilding logjam.
He says: “Our housing shortage is a very, very serious problem. The big developers must release their stranglehold on supply. It’s time to stop sitting on land banks and stop delaying build-out”.
A year ago ministers publicly set a target that a million new homes would be built in the UK by 2020 — meaning 200,000 a year, compared with well below 150,000 now. It’s never going to happen.
On tonight’s C4 programme, Professor Paul Cheshire, a housing expert at the London School of Economics and adviser to successive governments, explains why there is no chance of the Government achieving its target unless there is radical reform.
Professor Paul Cheshire, a housing expert at the London School of Economics: “Turning houses into gold: the failure of British planning”
Paul explains that in the past 20 years, Britain has built around 2.3m too few homes.
He wrote in 2014 about “Turning houses into gold: the failure of British planning” explaining why Britain’s crisis of housing affordability is nothing to do with foreign speculators but the result of decades of planning policies that constrain the supply of houses and land and turn them into something like gold.
The C4 documentary challenges UK’s house-building industry and explain why radical reforms are the only solution to the housing crisis – watch it via this link.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
A rundown office and warehouse building completely transformed into a modern headquarters for Atlas Copco has been fitted with more than 120 internal fire doors from Enfield Speciality Doors.
Posted in Access Control & Door Entry Systems, Articles, Building Industry News, Building Products & Structures, Building Systems, Case Studies, Doors, Interior Design & Construction, Interiors, Posts, Restoration & Refurbishment, Retrofit & Renovation, Security and Fire Protection, Sustainability & Energy Efficiency, Timber Buildings and Timber Products, Wooden productsAbloy UK, a leading provider of security and access control solutions, has launched a new white paper.
Posted in Access Control & Door Entry Systems, Architectural Ironmongery, Articles, Building Industry News, Building Products & Structures, Building Services, Doors, Facility Management & Building Services, Health & Safety, Information Technology, Innovations & New Products, Publications, Research & Materials Testing, Security and Fire ProtectionDavid Roy of MCRMA member company Roofconsult has more than 50 years’ experience to draw upon working in the building envelope sector and a unique perspective on how it has changed in that time.
Posted in Articles, BIM, Infrastructure & CAD Software, Building Associations & Institutes, Building Industry News, Building Products & Structures, Building Services, Building Systems, Cladding, Information Technology, Restoration & Refurbishment, Retrofit & Renovation, Roofs, WallsCraig Fox, Sales Director for Strand Hardware, outlines how door industry professionals might apply door limiting stays…
Posted in Architectural Ironmongery, Articles, Building Industry News, Building Products & Structures, Building Services, Doors, Facility Management & Building Services, Health & Safety, Restoration & Refurbishment, Retrofit & Renovation
No Place Like Home
I recommend taking a look at this new report from the CBI, one of the UK’s most influential business organisations. They call for radical thinking and more action if the Government is to deliver on its ambitious target of building one million new homes by 2020. Here is a link to my review of the report.