I chair the House of Commons All-Party Select Committee on
Communities and Local Government. We’ve been conducting an investigation into
housing supply and have just published our conclusions.
For decades, successive Governments have failed to deliver sufficient homes
to meet demand. The country faces a significant housing shortfall, and the
financial crisis has amplified the problem. 232,000 new households are
forming each year in England, and yet last year fewer than 110,000 new homes
were completed.There is no 'silver bullet'. We have to muster all the resources we can. The Government’s housing strategy has, in some aspects, made a useful start and I hope many of its measures will provide a stimulus over the short to medium term. But we need much more action if we are to see significant long term improvement in housing supply.
We set out four key areas for action, which, taken together, could go a long way to raising the finance needed to meet the housing shortfall:
- Large-scale investment
from institutions and pension funds
- Changes to the financing
of housing associations, including a new role for the historic grant on
their balance sheets
- Greater financial
freedoms for local authorities
- New and innovative
models, including a massive expansion of self build housing
We think that pension funds and large financial institutions
have a blind spot when it comes to housing but their investment could deliver a
significant number of new homes for rent.
After a visit to Almere in the Netherlands, we were convinced that there was
real potential in self build, where people manage the construction of their own
homes. Self build schemes could be a major new source of housing, but it will
require government, local authorities and lenders to work together to get
schemes underway very quickly. I’m pushing to get this initiative piloted
locally.
