Building of new homes for letting at social rents has fallen to a trickle – just 5,380 in the last financial year. The past five years have seen just 50,290 built altogether, most of these financed by social landlords without grant aid. Theresa May has promised to revive social renting “in those parts of the…
How many houses we need to build each year in England is the subject of much debate – but almost equally contentious are the statistics that show how many we are building. Just a month ago the Home Builders Federation claimed the government was misplacing enough houses to build a town the size of Stevenage….
There are signs the government may drop its focus on homeownership in response to the referendum’s economic impact and the apparent slowing down of the housing market. But is the real choice between assisting homeowners and helping tenants? Or might we get the best of both worlds? As recently as 2008, a quarter of the…
For those who don’t know it, the UK Housing Review is the annual publication that charts in detail the changes in the housing market, government housing policy and investment, social housing, help with housing costs and a host of other topics. Since 1999 the Review has been published by the Chartered Institute of Housing, and…
If tenants don’t exercise their right to buy, where will the money go, asks John Perry. Indications that only a small proportion of housing association tenants are likely to buy their homes once the scheme is rolled out begs a number of questions. What will happen to the money raised from selling higher-value council houses,…
George Osborne, before he reinvented himself as Rambo, when he was still the ‘austerity chancellor’, committed Theresa May’s government to spending a huge sum to prop up the housing market. The combined total of grants, loans and guarantees devoted to helping developers and homebuyers is set to exceed £42 billion between now and 2020 (similar…
When the majority of councils shouldered £13 billion of extra debt in April 2012 as the price for leaving the old council housing subsidy system, they were promised a settlement ‘intended to endure for the long term’. But the settlement has been undermined by policy changes since then and for many councils it threatens to…
CIH has just published a brand new edition of the book Housing in Northern Ireland, edited by Peter Shanks and David Mullins. Here CIH policy adviser John Perry, one of the authors, gives a flavour of what the new book offers. Less than ten years ago there was a house-building boom in Northern Ireland. Completions…