Government is determined to address Britain’s housing crisis

1988 was the last year that England built homes at the rate they're needed – over 200,000 a year.

The low point came at the end of last decade under Labour, when boom turned to bust – and house building went into cardiac arrest. In the second half of 2008 building almost stopped altogether.

In the last parliament, we got Britain building again and house building revived. Our planning reforms – fiercely resisted at the time – produced planning permissions for nearly 250,000 homes last year. Since 2010, 230,000 families have been helped into home ownership by government schemes like Help to Buy, doubling the number of first time buyers.  At the same time 260,000 affordable homes have been built – a quarter in high-priced London.

But building at this rate is still not enough. The lost years have left us short of homes. In what the Prime Minister has called this ‘turnaround decade’ we must eradicate the housing deficit that has built up with the same determination that we are closing the financial deficit.

That means getting back to building at the rate we managed a generation ago – and helping the 85% of Britons who want to become home owners to do so.

The Housing and Planning Bill which is being debated in Parliament today is a vital step forward. It includes measures to build 200,000 Starter Homes for first time buyers; grants planning permission in principle to registered brownfield sites to speed up building; helps small building firms come back into the market to compete with the large incumbents; and provides 1.3 million tenants of housing associations with the right to become homeowners – while funding housing associations to build new homes.

Providing the homes that the next generation needs is one of the defining challenges of our generation – a solemn duty on national government and local government, on house builders and housing associations. We must all work together to find the land, grant planning permission, raise the finance, build the homes and give people the chance to buy or rent them. 

The historic agreement between housing associations and the Government to extend the right to buy shows what is possible. So it is disappointing that Labour, whose shadow Housing Minister described the fall in home ownership he presided over as “not such a bad thing”, is opposing the Bill today. While others are coming together, they are standing apart, turning their back on the aspirations of people to own a home of their own. 

I hope that they will take a more constructive attitude in future, but meanwhile we will move ahead to build the homes this country needs.