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Lords call for more houses

news

16th August 2016

The House of Lords economic affairs committee has called for government house-building targets - which are already being missed - to be raised by 50% so that 300,000 new homes will be constructed each year.

Under the current targets, the government aims for 200,000 properties a year, although during the period of economic turbulence, that figure was missed significantly on several occasions.

Now the Lords committee has deemed the target itself to be inadequate, and has called for relaxed rules for housing associations and local authorities to build new properties for sale and rent.

The report is titled Building More Homes, and criticises the 200,000 target for failing to meet the pace of demand, and for not limiting the rate of house price increases.

It adds that efforts to help people on to the property ladder at the bottom end - such as the Right to Buy scheme - are actually reducing the availability of low-cost rental properties at the same time.

Lord Hollick, chairman of the committee, said: "We are facing an acute housing crisis with home ownership - and increasingly renting - being simply unaffordable for a great many people. The only way to address this is to increase supply.

"The country needs to build 300,000 homes a year for the foreseeable future. The private sector alone cannot deliver that. It has neither the ability nor motivation to do so. We need local government and housing associations to get back into the business of building."

He added that local authorities do not have the finances they need to meet this challenge - even though they, in general, are keen to meet their communities' supply needs - and are also unable to borrow to fund new social housing projects.

"It makes no sense that a local authority is free to borrow to build a swimming pool but cannot do the same to build homes," he argued.

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