People living alone and growing numbers of young people living with their parents, because they don’t have the funds for their own place, have been attributed to a massive demand for homes to be built.
Locality and size of new homes being built has been a big source of debate as figures reveal that 247,000 more houses are being built in England and Wales annually than are demolished. This figure is less than the Government target of 300,000 new homes in England alone each year but is a massive increase from 2012-13 when it more than doubled, with a home target of 130,000.
There is certainly an appetite to build houses and developers are eager to do more, but it seems various factors have stalled housing development. According to the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government’s ‘Housing Delivery Targets 2019’ data, in total, 34% of local authorities fell short of meeting their housing targets for 2019.
In addition, data indicates that land for over a million homes remains dormant and unused despite being granted planning permission over the past ten years.
A leading think tank dedicated to improving the economies of the UK’s largest cities and towns, Centre for Cities, confirmed that new homes were mostly built in cities and large towns – defined as places with a daytime population of at least 135,000. The think tank statistics reveal about 803,000 homes were built in these localities between 2011 and 2019.
Of the 803,000, the majority (734,000) were built in the suburbs, about 69,000 are based in the city centres, which is an increase of 16 per cent over the past eight years, compared to an overall rise of 6% for England and Wales.
However, construction of dwellings has rose in other areas too. Since 2011, 735,000 homes have been built outside of main centres – but three quarters of these homes are not a long distance away from a city or a large town.
Surprisingly, London has constructed the biggest number of homes, building 307,000 since 2011. In terms of size, this figure is equivalent to two additional cities the size of Sunderland or one city the size of Bristol. Whereas, Tower Hamlets has contributed the most to this overall total, with 23,600.
Furthermore, there is difference in the actual size of a new home when comparing it against an existing home. An average new home is 92 sq m (990 sq ft), whereas an existing home is 89 sq m – however, there is disparity across the country.
New built homes in cities were smallest at 64 sq m but outside city centres they averaged 101 sq m. Regionally, the North of England’s new homes averages much larger than the south.
