By Katharine Pindar
We will be fighting for the young people of our country if we demand that the government declare this year a national emergency to provide thousands of new houses, especially affordable homes, before the next General Election.
The house price-to-earnings ratio shows that in 2024-25 a home cost roughly 8 to 9 times the average individual wage to buy, compared to about 5 to 6 times twenty years ago. With private rents additionally being so high now, it is small wonder that, even if they are working full-time, many young people in Britain are these days remaining in their parental home into their 20s and even 30s. With house prices only reducing slightly recently, the need for rapid provision of more small affordable homes for young people, whether for single people or couples, is evident. But much more evident are three or four-bedroom Executive-type houses being built on new estates country-wide.
The government after its election promised to build 1.5 million new homes by 2029, and pledged in July it would build up to 300,000 affordable homes over a decade, 60% of them for social rent. Our own party’s policy, passed at the Bournemouth Conference in September 2023, is for 150,000 social homes (that is, homes costing less than 50% of current market value) to be built every year by the end of the next Parliament. Neither the government’s pledge nor our own party’s policy look at present remotely attainable.
This is despite Keir Starmer’s party-conference announcement in September last year that the tens of thousands of homes promised to be built over the next decade will be partly provided before the next General Election by construction starting in at least three proposed new towns, most likely at Tempsford in Bedfordshire, Leeds’ South Bank and Crows Hill in Enfield, north London. Each town is to have a minimum of 10,000 homes, with the appropriate social infrastructure provided. This sounds admirable, and in keeping with our own policy of seeking ten new towns, but where is the urgency to begin the construction?
The government is hoping to emulate Clement Attlee’s post-war housing programme from 1945, which rebuilt the construction industry, and began the New Towns’ development with Harlow and Stevenage. Building to meet immediate needs, 156,623 prefabs were rapidly erected, and more that 1.2 million new homes, mostly council houses, were built under that government. Then the Churchill government from 1951, with Harold Macmillan as Minister of Housing, made housing the government’s top priority, co-ordinating the supply of labour, materials and finance, pressurising local authorities and private builders to meet demand, and did succeed in building 300,000 houses a year. Labour had emphasised council-house building, the Conservatives encouraged private builders as well as councils, and the mixed economy – continuing state subsidies for council housing – increased the total output quickly.
Councillor Peter Thornton, Chair of our party’s Working Group on tackling the housing crisis, says that the current system relies on the private sector only, and in his opinion “We now need to add powers and funding to allow the public sector to build.” This is likely to be provided for the proposed New Towns under their development corporations, but not generally to councils at present. Our local councils should surely be demanding this now. In Liverpool Councillor Carl Cashman, leader of the Liberal Democrats on Liverpool Council, has written of the need to empower local authorities to build the social and affordable homes required, with local government financial rules apparently requiring to be changed. Councils will need to be given new powers to force developers to build on sites they have obtained permission for, or to compulsorily purchase and develop land themselves or through local housing associations.
Only just over 10,000 social homes are currently built in England each year. In London, the government sought to have 88,000 finished last year, but by mid-October only 3,248 had been built. Yet the government’s emergency plan for London was to reduce the proportion of new development required for affordable housing from 35% to 20%, worsening the crisis of too-few affordable dwellings being built there. The government also planned to suspend the necessary infrastructure contributions, known as the Community Infrastructure Levy, which could mean estates being built without the essential provision of schools, surgeries and transport links.
Far from reducing the proportion of affordable properties required from the big developers, it would surely be better to subsidise them for every home for social rent they provide. However, it would also surely be desirable for councils to invest in new or existing small-scale ventures to build modular housing, dwellings constructed in factories to provide homes much faster and more cheaply. Modular Methods of Construction, now using digital technologies for building, could be promoted by the government and councils with a view especially to provide first-time homes for young people. In the UK, Artificial Intelligence suggests modular means of building could provide around 15,000 new homes a year, but industry figures suggest that in fact only 3,300 were provided in 2022.
The needs of young people beginning their working lives and wanting homes of their own should surely be the driving force behind emergency action on provision of housing this year and next We should now demand of the government Attlee-type urgency to fulfil this urgent continuing need.
Katharine Pindar is a member of the 2024 - 2026 Social Liberal Forum Council and long-standing member of the Cumberland Lib Dems. This article is a re-publication of a Lib Dem Voice article authored by Katharine.