Investment in housing: creating decent homes
A new survey reveals that 92 per cent of housing professionals believe that there should be a Government target for maintaining decent homes beyond the 2010 deadline.
Chartered Institute of Housing members have given overwhelming support to an idea mooted by the CIH for Government to go beyond the decent homes programme to set targets for housing providers to keep decent homes in a good state of repair.
Sarah Webb, CIH Director of Policy and Practice said: ‘The decent homes programme was essentially a catch up exercise targeting a £19bn backlog of underinvestment. We need an ongoing maintenance programme now to ensure we’re not facing an even bigger bill in ten or 20 years’ time.’
The survey of CIH members shows that the vast majority of them believe that extra investment in housing is needed and that the three priorities for the Government in its Comprehensive Spending Review in 2007 should be building more new homes, regeneration programmes and tackling homelessness.
The comments came in response to Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Ruth Kelly’s remarks to the Chartered Institute of Housing Conference on 20 June. Kelly agreed that decent housing is vital if we are to ensure that the economy can continue to be buoyant, run near full capacity but without setting off inflation. Housing, she added, says a lot about what we value and what kind of society we want to promote. There is an important role for government, not least through housing policy, by trying to create mixed communities. The type of housing in an area, its size, tenure and its design all affect the way a community sees itself and how it is seen by others.
Kelly also announced new housing monies during the speech: an additional £106 million for Manchester Salford over the next two years; £46 million for housing markets in the Tees Valley, West Yorkshire and West Cumbria.
More housing needed in London
According to a new London Assembly report, the creation of decent homes, and enough of them, remains a priority across London. A shortage of affordable housing has led to overcrowding in London, their reseach indicates.
In many boroughs, housing provision is falling behind ambitious targets. Furthermore, where developers are meeting targets, they may not be meeting local need. In order to meet their ‘affordable units’ targets, house-builders often supply only the smallest units, as they are the cheapest. We found that there is a surplus of some 12,000 one-bedroom properties, but a shortfall of over 28,000 two, three and four bedroom dwellings for which there is the greatest need.
Our report primarily presses for greater clarity in defining ‘affordable housing’ in borough development plans and for changes to the Mayor’s London Plan, his main strategic planning document, to better incentivise the building of homes with more bedrooms and more sophisticated methods of calculating The report also found instances of apartments labelled affordable by developers on the market for £400,000 or more. It calls for changes to the mayor's London Plan to encourage the building of homes with more bedrooms, and for the boroughs to do more match housing provision to local demand.
