UK needs to build 400 homes a day for 20 years

NEW homes will have to be built in England at a rate of more than 400 a day for the next two decades and more, official projections show.

By 2041, an extra four million homes will be needed to cope with the country’s fast-increasing population and number of households, data from the Office for National Statistics said.

Its report claims most of the new houses and flats will be sought by older people as the population ages, while more than a third will be needed due to immigration.

It assumes that net immigration – the difference between the number of immigrants coming in and the number of emigrants leaving the UK over a year – will sit steady at 152,000 people a year after 2023.

However, the most recent ONS immigration figures showed, in the year to the end of March, net immigration was 270,000.

Alp Mehmet, of Migration Watch UK, said: ‘This is a hopeless underestimate. The ONS are projecting annual net migration 25 per cent lower than seen in the last 10 years.’

The projections, which are based on population estimates in 2016, are the first to be produced by the ONS. They said that 159,000 homes will need to be built each year between 2016 and 2041.

Projections, based on 2014 figures and calculated by the Communities Department, put the number of homes needed each year for 25 years at 210,000.

Joanna Harkrader, of the ONS, said: ‘The figures show that the number of households in England is projected to increase by four million between 2016 and 2041, a slower growth than previously projected.

‘This reflects lower projections of the population – notably assumptions around future births, how long we’ll live and migration – and more up-todate figures about living arrangements, such as living with parents or cohabiting. We project the majority of household growth over the next 25 years will be because of the rise in the number of households headed by someone aged 65 years and over.’ The ONS suggests there will be limited pressure for new housing in the north of England. But household numbers will go up by 24 per cent in London, 21 per cent in the East and 20 per cent in the South East by 2041. These regions have seen the highest immigration over the past 20 years.

The greatest growth in households would be in those headed by people aged 85 and over, the report said, doubling from the present level of about a million