The 2019 Conservative election manifesto was full of grand ambitions for expanding England’s housing stock and improving access to the housing market. Planning regulations would be overhauled. At least a million more homes would be constructed by 2024; the goal was 300,000 a year by the middle of this decade. The homes would be beautiful, safe, environmentally friendly and affordable.
It was largely a fantasy. Today, the housing picture is abject, not sunny. The government’s plans are stalled and the housing market is becoming ever more prohibitive. Much of the reason is economic. Higher interest rates, inflation and the cost of living crisis mean would-be buyers cannot enter the home-buying market. In the rental sector, ever larger number of tenants are in arrears and face eviction as benefits are frozen. Shelter warned this week that a million people are at risk of being forced on to the streets this winter.
