This government has presided over the
lowest level of house building in peacetime since the 1920s. The government’s
Help to Buy scheme is fueling house-price inflation, with Ministers claiming
this isn’t a problem because house prices (other than in London) haven’t yet
returned to 2008 prices. Do they not understand that 2008 prices were
unsustainable and had been fueled by easy credit and corrupted sub-prime
lending?
The failure to tackle the housing shortage
means the cost of housing is rising out of reach of low-to-middle-income
earners. There has been a significant increase in private renting, with
buy-to-let purchasers outbidding potential owners, particularly at the lower
end of the market. And private rents have increased well above inflation.
Meanwhile, the government has been cutting
housing benefit and introduced the bedroom tax, creating an impression that the
total housing benefit bill has been falling. Nothing could be further from the
rhetoric.
There has been a huge increase in the
number of people who are in work but who need to claim housing benefit to help
pay their rent. It’s a direct result of the government’s failure to make work
pay, tackle the cost-of-living crisis and build the new homes we need.
Now it has been revealed that, in England,
there has been a 60% increase in the number of working people needing to
claim housing benefit to pay their rent since 2010. 400,000 more working people
are claiming housing benefit costing the taxpayer an estimated extra £4.8bn in
housing benefit over the course of this Parliament.
This
isn’t just a problem in some areas. Every single council in the UK has seen an increase in the number of people
in work claiming housing benefit. In fact, Sheffield has seen a 93% increase
and Rotherham a 92% increase, since 2010.
The number of households in South
Yorkshire reliant on housing benefit to help pay their housing bill has now
increased to more than 120,000. This rather undermines the headline claims of
economic recovery and increasing employment.
