A National Audit Office (NAO) report has claimed that plans to build 200,000 affordable homes specifically for first-time buyers has failed in spectacular fashion with no homes being built.
Despite the ‘starter homes’ idea and announcement being made in 2014 and heavily backed in David Cameron’s manifesto pledges embedded in the 2015 general election, a catalogue of legislative oversights and errors prevented the scheme from gaining traction.
The homes were aiming to be custom built to cater for younger, first time buyers starting their journey into the property market.
Sites in areas close to major city locations, like Stockport with close connection links to Manchester, were handpicked to appeal to this young professional demographic.
The Government were also prepared to invest in the project with £174 million spent on available land and site preparation between 2015 and the end of 2018.
A target of 60,000 dwellings was set for completion by the end of 2019 with more than £2 billion squirrelled away to complete the work.
However, planning guidance and legislation failed to materialise by the 2019 deadline, leaving the scheme doomed to fail.
Whilst the purchased land is now being used to build the needed residential housing stock, only a fraction has been set aside for affordable housing and none is being marketed specifically to the younger demographic as ‘starter homes.’
Meg Hillier, Chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, said:
“Despite setting aside over £2bn to build 60,000 new starter homes, none were built.
“Since 2010 many housing programmes announced with much fanfare have fallen away with money then recycled into the next announcement.
“The MHCLG needs to focus on delivery and not raise, and then dash, people’s expectations.”
Neil Knight, Business Development Director at Spicerhaart Part-Exchange and Assisted Move, said:
“It is clearly disappointing that there has been so little progress on delivering the starter homes the country needs – but if the land earmarked by the project is still going to be used for housing then it is not entirely wasted.
“It remains absolutely crucial to bring more land into use for new homes to meet the demand not just of first-time buyers but of people looking to upsize as their families grow, or downsize in later life.
“This does not need to mean concreting over valuable Green Belt sites: recent analysis by the Campaign to Protect Rural England has found there are more than 18,000 brownfield sites, and more than 26,000 hectares of brownfield land that could be built on. What we need to hear from politicians is what they are going to do to help bring this land into use.”
John Healey, Labour’s shadow housing secretary, said:
“After nearly 10 years of Conservative failure on housing, the country needs a Labour government to fix the housing crisis.”
A spokesperson from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, commented:
“We have a great track record… with 222,000 homes delivered last year, and 1.3 million in total since 2010, including over 430,000 affordable homes.”
David O’Leary, Policy Director at Home Builders Federation, said:
“The difficulty in creating a workable set of rules demonstrates the importance of ensuring that proper consideration is given to the practical implementation of interventions and their market impacts as early as possible.”
Does the Government need to do more to ensure appropriate accommodation is being built for this younger demographic?
2 Responses
Long term plans are bound to fail with a revolving door for housing ministers who only have time in post to create a sound-bite about the need to build more homes
Having downsized to my son’s no-longer-needed bachelor flat for my retirement I would recommend a non-generational approach
Neil Knight’s reference to growing families needing to upsize is important.
The process of downsizing is horrendously stressful and put me in a resuscitation unit. And it often results in exposure to landlords for the first time in life.
It is not surprising that the elderly are using equity release (see recent article in TC) to avoid this causing family homes to be under occupied and unavailable to upsizers.
Bed-blocking is a major problem for the NHS. Bedroom-blocking will soon become one for housing unless a more friendly way of moving with due regard to elderly downsizing is developed.