Government and Labor are under increasing pressure to deliver on their promises to fix the UK housing market as rising prices threaten to become a key campaign issue.
This is what economists and activists across the political spectrum have told us. I that a significant shortage of housing has led to a constant increase in prices, making it difficult for new buyers to start construction and increasing costs for tenants.
Michael Gove has acknowledged that the housing system is “broken” but Labor argues that the Minister for Upgrading cannot fix it because of conservative resistance to building more houses.
The UK average house price has nearly doubled since 2009, roughly double the rate of inflation, with London and southern England showing the fastest growth, according to the Office for National Statistics. Currently, the average private tenant spends more than a quarter of their income on housing costs.
“It’s all about shortages, we just haven’t built enough houses in decades,” Freddie Poser of the Priced Out initiative group told me. I. The Center for Cities estimates that the nation’s housing stock needs to increase by 15 percent to avoid rising house prices, while charity Shelter is calling for an additional 90,000 units of social rental housing to be built annually.
“If we don’t take action and show that we care about the housing crisis and how it’s growing, more and more people will be affected,” said Shelter’s Tarun Bhakta. “It prevents people from putting down roots, starting a family, accessing jobs, affecting their health and putting a strain on the National Health Service.”
Economist Sam Bowman, co-author of The Housing Theory of Everything, warned that the impact of expensive housing goes far beyond its direct impact. “The basic intuition is that your home determines a lot of other things about you, so the size of the house you can afford affects, for example, how many children you can have,” he said.
“In order to increase productivity and also so that we can grow and innovate as a country, we need people to do high-performance work, and in the modern, knowledge-based economy that the UK mainly has, this means that people live in close proximity to each other. friend in places where it is the existing knowledge economy.”
Senior Conservatives have previously argued that the “flattening” will relieve pressure on the most expensive housing markets by moving more jobs to disadvantaged parts of the country so local youth don’t have to move in search of opportunities.
But Anthony Breech of the City Center said: “To maximize the benefits to the national economy, you need to make cities grow and give people access to the benefits of Oxford, Cambridge, London and Brighton.” have less severe housing crises, and the regional disparity is also not as severe, so I think they are connected.”
The government’s last major step in dealing with the crisis came in 2020, when then-Housing Minister Robert Jenrick proposed liberalizing the planning system to make it faster and easier to build new homes across England. This was opposed by Conservative MPs who feared losing local control over new developments.
Mr. Gove, whose Leveling Up portfolio now includes apartments, promised to try again. He recently wrote, “We all agree that the current housing model—from supply to standards to the mortgage market—is broken.” Tenant reform bill and increased protection for social housing tenants facing poor conditions.
But the bill to raise the level is constantly delayed as MPs and peers try to amend it to soften key provisions and add their own inconveniences – so many amendments were made in a single day of debate in the House of Lords that there were several proposals. vote there because they were growing faster than colleagues could handle.
Labor insiders are skeptical that Gove will be able to push through meaningful reforms despite opposition from his own side. Despite some criticism that Sir Keir Starmer did not mention housing as one of his five ‘missions’ to the government, a Labor source said: ‘That will be a big, big part of our proposal. We intentionally didn’t make it one of our five missions because it supports so many other things.” reducing the waiting list for public housing.
Activists are encouraged by the new political focus on housing. “This could become a very important issue in the general election,” Bhakta said. “It’s impossible to ignore, but we must combine it with a clear commitment to addressing the housing crisis,” Mr. Bowman added. “It’s become such an obvious point that it’s impossible to deny.”
The planning system needs to be overhauled to make it more predictable for those who want to be sure when they can or cannot do it, while ensuring that major new developments are accompanied by the transport infrastructure and public services that local communities need. areas, Mr. Violation said. He said: “The argument that politicians have to make is that we are moving from this unpredictable, highly confrontational planning system that is insecure and annoying to everyone, to a rule-based system.”
But the discussion doesn’t end there, as most people already own their own home and therefore benefit immediately from price increases, even if the domino effect isn’t as noticeable. Mr Poser said: “The battle is not yet won, I’m not sure people realize how bad things are.”
Source: I News
I’m Sandra Hansen, a news website Author and Reporter for 24 News Reporters. I have over 7 years of experience in the journalism field, with an extensive background in politics and political science. My passion is to tell stories that are important to people around the globe and to engage readers with compelling content.