Region remains in grip of housing crisis

Two thirds of areas lagging behind with building rates

YORKSHIRE REMAINS in the grips of a housing crisis, with two thirds of council areas failing to get home building rates back to pre-recession rates a decade after the global financial crash.

Major new analysis of official Government housing data has also revealed huge discrepancies in housing supply between individual cities and rural districts in the county, and between the numbers of new homes councils and Ministers believe each area needs.

It has led to claims that “messy” planning policies and a “fetishisation” of the green belt are hampering the pace of building and thereby slowing the economic growth potential of the region as a whole.

Across the country, detailed analysis of regional variations in house building by the BBC’s Shared Data Unit revealed that a decade after the global economic downturn, less than one in five areas of England are building enough homes every year at a pace to meet the Government’s medium to long-term housing need estimates, and the majority of areas have still not got back to supplying new homes at the same rates they were before the global economic crash of 2008.

The Government today re-affirmed its pledge to enable the building of 300,000 homes a year in England by the mid 2020s.

But campaigners claimed the numbers needed have been underestimated, and called on Ministers to deal with the “national emergency” by putting affordability at the centre of policy.

Shadow Housing Minister and Wentworth and Dearne MP John Healey said: “The housing crisis is getting worse. Over the last eight years, we have seen home ownership levels fall. We have seen homelessness and rents rise. We have seen the level of house building still not back at its pre-global financial crisis peak, and for many people, the housing crisis is a housing costs crisis, a crisis of housing affordability.

“And whilst there are failures at a local level, the main responsibility must lie with Government. When you have government weakening the powers of councils to drive a better bargain with big house builders for people in their area, when you get a Government chopping and changing the planning rules as they have done in five separate acts of Parliament in the last eight years, you get a system which is failing.”

The BBC findings were published as the Government also faced renewed calls to abolish stamp duty for pensioners moving house in a move that would free up much-needed family homes for younger buyers. Yorkshire peer Lord Best called on chancellor Philip Hammond to follow-up his announcement in last year’s Autumn Budget that first-time buyers would pay no stamp duty on homes costing less than £300,000 with a similar move for over-65s.

Last year, research by the National Housing Federation found that average house prices in Yorkshire are now more than seven times average salaries.

DEVOLUTION FOR the regions is going to be a key driver for helping cities to boost their house building rates, according to the country’s newest – and Yorkshire’s only – metro mayor.

Dan Jarvis, Sheffield City Region mayor, said: “Devolving power and funding to the right tier of local, regional and national Government means that decisions can be taken at the right level.”

He said the current formula for calculating housing need “favours London and the South-East as it prioritises schemes where homes will be sold for higher prices.

“Instead, funds should be allocated based on need, rather than straightforward financial gain,” he said.

“This would help to rebalance the North-South divide and give communities within the Sheffield City Region a fairer deal.”

Mr Jarvis was speaking as new analysis of official Government data revealed huge discrepancies in housing supply across some of Yorkshire’s cities and rural districts.

While large metropolitan centres like Leeds and Sheffield limp towards achieving housing supply rates at the same pace as they were before the recession, some outlying areas are exceeding targets by huge numbers. However areas with longer standing devolution deals are already reaping some benefits – like the West Midlands, which received a pledge of £350m to help boost house building in the spring budget. Meanwhile, the housing picture across some of Yorkshire’s more rural areas is also a mixed one. Richmondshire – which only needs to build 14 homes a year according to Government estimates in the BBC data – is managing to build 11 times that many homes on average, giving it the highest performance in the country for net additions to its stock.

However there are often large difference between Government and council figures.

York Central MP Rachael Maskell, inset, said a politicallydriven reluctance to build on the green belt – and instead focus on “little scraps of brownfield space” and on luxury apartments rather then family homes – were major factors in individual areas’ building successes and failures.

“We need to make sure we build the right kind of homes,” she said.

“We have a site with 1,000 homes, the British Sugar site, which has just three per cent social housing, when we have got real social housing need.

“Developers are using and abusing the freedoms they have got in order to achieve the profits they want. (We should be) turning it on its head, saying ‘what is the local housing need?’ – which clearly these figures are supposed to show – and then to build on that.”

Ms Maskell added: “Clearly policy isn’t working because there are areas like York which are shamefully behind where they should be.

“But some authorities are turning a blind eye and are more concerned with addressing other agendas than actually saying we have a housing need.

“The way that it is showing itself is that we cannot recruit the skills that we need for our cities – care workers, nurses – because they can’t afford to live here.

“So it’s having a massive impact on services.”

Ms Maskell also worried about other negative impacts. “Not getting this equation right puts the economy in a negative spiral.

“None of us know what Brexit is going to do to any of that, but we absolutely need to think longterm planning.

“We need policy to be future proofed to make sure we are building for the future.”

IT’S IRONIC that those who complain most vociferously about the imposition of housing targets are, invariably, those who also bemoan sky-high property prices and how they are now out of the financial reach of so many prospective firsttime buyers.

However they do need to recognise that every missed target therefore exacerbates the housing shortage and puts further pressure on prices at a time when this country needs a far more balanced, and nuanced approach, to such a complex issue.

As The Yorkshire Post’s week-long series on the county’s changing demographics continues to demonstrate, current decisions on all aspects of policy will have long-term repercussions for an ageing society – and housing is no exception to this.

Yet, while it is understandable that developers want to exploit the regeneration opportunities that still exist in Yorkshire’s cities, the need for affordable housing will be even more pressing in the county’s towns and villages in future.

For, unless younger families can afford to live here, and further their own career ambitions, older residents face the prospect of a lonely existence because the correlation between housing and social policy has not been recognised by national, regional and local leaders.

And while many will sympathise with Boris Johnson’s call for a stamp duty cut as part of his pitch for the Tory leadership, Yorkshire – and the rest of Britain – does, in fact, need much firmer policy foundations if new homes are to be not only built in the correct place, but also meet the needs of the young and old alike.