Britain’s housing crisis has built for decades under successive governments, and the task of solving it will likely take just as long. Below are the biggest challenges faced by the Conservatives and what they have done so far.
1 SUPPLY
The crisis is driven by a lack of supply and a continual drop in the number of new homes being built since the early 1990s. In 2017, 217,000 new homes were built in England, the highest number in ten years, but that was still 83,000 short of the 300,000 the government believes is needed each year.
What the government has done
In 2013, it introduced the Help to Buy equity scheme, which offers interest-free loans on new-build homes for five years. This has supported the purchase of 144,826 homes but some say it has led housebuilders to inflate prices. In November the government said it would provide an extra £10 billion for the scheme.
2 HIGH HOUSE PRICES
The average house price across the UK is eight times the average income. The level of home ownership has been at a 30-year low for the past three years and more than 1.13 million people aged between 35 and 44 in England now live in privately rented accommodation, compared with 730,000 in 2010.
What the government has done
In November, the chancellor abolished stamp duty on the first £300,000 value of a home worth up to £500,000, if bought by a first-time buyer.
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3 THE RENTAL MARKET
The average price of a one or two bed home is believed to have been pushed up by a boom in the buy-to-let sector. A fifth of England’s population lives in accommodation owned by a private landlord, double what it was in 2000. Rents went up 15 per cent between 2011 and 2017 and the average couple in the private sector spends half their salary on rent.
What the government has done
In April 2016 it introduced a 3 per cent surcharge on the purchase of second homes and buy-to-let properties to dampen demand among landlords. It is cutting the amount of tax relief landlords can claim on mortgage interest payments, which has been combined with tighter lending rules from mortgage companies.
4 LACK OF SOCIAL HOUSING
In the 1960s, the supply of new homes hit a post-war peak of 400,000 a year, but this tailed off in the 1970s and 1980s. The number of new affordable homes being built slumped to a 24-year low in 2015 of 32,110 before marginally increasing to 41,530 in 2016. The number of social rented homes fell more than 2 per cent between 2012 and 2015 — a loss of 95,755 dwellings.
What the government has done
It is providing funding of £9.1 billion up to 2021 for housing associations and other not-for-profit developers through its Affordable Homes Programme and believes this will provide an extra 25,000 homes.
5 GREEN-BELT LAND
Green-belt regulations were first introduced between 1947 and 1955 to protect urban sprawl, but critics say the boundaries are outdated have caused the price of land for residential use to shoot up in areas of high demand.
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What the government has done
It has promised to maintain the strong protections for the green belt, but said boundaries could be amended “in exceptional circumstances”.