Well it appears as if we are back at Groundhog Day again on housing policy, another white paper acknowledging that we have a major housing crisis in the UK but with limited ideas about how we fix it.
What we do have is some comforting words. Government has ‘listened ‘it wants to ‘help’ to ‘support’. But when we peel back the comforting language what lurks beneath? Well very little that we can rely upon. Whilst I appreciate that running alongside the white paper is a series of consultations it is a missed opportunity to put some tangible solutions forward.
APSE, alongside our research partners in the TCPA, are working on our third tranche of housing research. Time and again we find that the root cause of the housing crisis is the lack of supply of new build, the mix of properties that are being built and in particular the lack of affordable homes. We have consistently called for a strengthened role for local councils to deliver homes for rent on scale to alleviate the strain at the bottom end of the housing ladder.