Essential housing for our key workers

Ahead of today’s fiscal statement, North Devon MP Selaine Saxby and Victor Da Cuhna, chair of Homes for the South West, argue that help is urgently needed to house those who work in our communities

AS an MP and a Housing Association CEO, we’ve seen just how difficult the past couple of years have been for many, struggling with the impact of the pandemic and its after-effects.

If there’s one positive to come out of this period, it’s the appreciation for our key workers who have worked tirelessly to keep us safe and essential services running. We’ve also come to understand that keyworkers are a broad church of people, from doctors to carers, from firefighters to shopworkers. We need them all to keep our communities flourishing.

As North Devon and the wider South West region move into the post-pandemic era, we must learn from those events and ensure that there is good quality housing available for them all; homes they can afford, close to where they work, their networks and families. Without that, our economy can’t bounce back quickly, and our communities will struggle.

The South West is a beautiful place, boasting over 600 miles of coastline, numerous World Heritage Sites and national parks. It’s no wonder that tourists come from all across the country to visit or that 371,000 new residents moved to the region from other parts of the country since 2011. Staggeringly, 27% of England’s entire second homes stock is registered in the South West – the highest regional concentration. No data is collected on short-term lets such as Airbnb’s (which we believe there must be in future), but without doubt there will also be many more used in this way across the region. Together, the two uses disrupt the residential market, reducing the homes available for sale and private renting.

According to academic research, an estimated 42,000 new homes per year are required in the South West to keep up with demand. Of these, 15,000 homes need to be ‘affordable’ – for rent and home ownership. However, the most recent public data shows that the annual regional shortfall in new homes stands at 22,000, meaning each year the situation gets worse. In the most impacted parts of the South West it’s estimated that it would take 126 years, at the current housebuilding rates, to meet accumulated need. These backlogs have fuelled house price inflation with the median house price now running at around 10 times the median income. In the ten least affordable Local Authority areas this ratio is now 28.3 times median earnings.

The consequences of this housing shortage and disruption are severe for businesses and our communities. Residents cannot afford to live locally, and businesses cannot fulfil their potential because they don’t have access to enough employees. Services including hospitals like North Devon District Hospital, along with our schools, cannot recruit the key workers needed to ensure that our public services are protected.

It’s clearly more vital than ever to support the delivery of quality, energy efficient, affordable housing for our key workers and other local residents who keep essential services functioning.

But how do we do this? Well, a good start would be to reform the policy on how to dispose of public sector land. If local priorities and housing need are put at the forefront of decision-making on former public sector land, then what we will see is redundant land transformed into spaces where key workers and local people can affordably live. This makes perfect sense in the case of NHS land for example – healthcare sites are often situated close together and if part of this land is prioritised for affordable housing on the site, then key healthcare workers will have the opportunity to live affordably and local to their workplace.

Another effective measure would be to increase the speed of planning decisions by Local Authorities by changing the way planning departments are funded. Planning departments need skilled resources to assess planning applications speedily. All developers, including Housing Associations, would willing pay for a fully resourced, high quality planning service. Fully staffed planning functions in Local Authorities would assess applications promptly and, when approved, could also discharge conditions on time.

We owe it to our key workers who have taken such care of us to ensure that they have access to an affordable, quality home – these measures to reform public sector land policy and change the funding for planning departments are vital in that ambition.