A cross-party group of MPs has issued a damning report on the government’s housing track record, which it claims has ‘constantly failed to deliver affordable new homes’.
In a report published today (10 December), the public accounts committee condemned the recent series of polices that ‘come to nothing as ministers come and go with alarming frequency’.
It also condemns the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) for letting the Starter Homes policy ‘drift out of existence’, which promised 200,000 discounted homes for first-time buyers in 2015.
Despite setting out the legislative framework for Starter Homes in 2016, the committee said the Whitehall department has never put in place the necessary laws to make the affordable homes initiative a reality.
The report also criticises the MHCLG for being ‘unable or unwilling to clarify how it will achieve its ambition of 300,000 new homes per year by the mid-2020s’.
It adds there is an alarming ‘blurring’ of the definition of affordable housing and it is essential that the department is clear what ‘affordable’ means to different sectors of society and in different areas of the country.
‘The department for ‘housing’ is at risk of losing the right to the title,’ said committee chair, Meg Hillier.
‘It has serially, constantly failed to deliver affordable new homes or even make a serious attempt to execute its own housing policies or achieve targets before they are ditched, unannounced – costs sunk and outcomes unknown.
‘MHCLG needs to ditch instead the false promises and set out clear, staged, funded plans, backed by the necessary laws and with a realistic prospect of delivering,’ she added.
The chief executive of Shelter, Polly Neate said the report shows how the government’s approach to solving the housing emergency has ‘been focused on all the wrong solutions’.
‘The government has persisted with schemes for expensive homes which often end up not getting built,’ said Ms Neate.
‘You can’t just call something affordable when it’s not affordable at all for the majority of people. It’s time they listened to what people actually need. There is wide public and political support for social housing across the country, but progress is non-existent: a paltry 6,600 new social homes were built last year.’
A MHCLG spokesperson said: ‘These false claims ignore the facts. They are misleading and we reject them – since 2010 over 663,000 households have been helped into home ownership through government schemes.
‘Last year alone we delivered a quarter of a million new homes, the highest number in over three decades. We’re also investing over £12bn in affordable housing over the next five years – the largest investment in a decade – and our new First Homes scheme will help local people and key workers buy their own home, in the area they already live, at a discount of 30%.’
Photo Credit – Derwiki (Pixabay)
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