In a matter of weeks, social housing has zoomed to the top of the UK agenda. From being the Cinderella form of housing, which previous UK governments were very happy to see sold off and shrink, it is now seen as a driver of economic growth.
In the General Election, the Labour manifesto included housing within its mission to boost the economy, with a pledge to ‘the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation’. Steps are already being taken to reform the planning system in England and set binding local targets for new housebuilding in order to deliver.
Most of these UK Government reforms stop at Offa’s Dyke, because the planning system is largely devolved to the Welsh Government as is the provision of social housing. Indeed, in a step pretty much unrecognised in England, the Welsh Government had already committed to building 20,000 homes for social rent by 2026. It’s worth noting that not all these homes will be low-cost rentals – they can include dwellings let at an intermediate rent and even shared ownership, so long as there is a social landlord.
Three years into the five-year plan, there should be many new developments of social homes dotted around Wales. But instead of the 12,000 units that there should be if construction had occurred at an even pace, there are just 5,771. And of these, even fewer – 4,780 – are conventional socially-rented homes.
There are many different reasons why progress is falling far short: lack of affordable and developable land, the slowness of the planning system, issues with the supply chain of materials and difficulty recruiting workers to name but a few. The former Welsh Secretary for Housing, Julie James MS, has said that achieving the target will ‘‘be touch and go, but we’ll still make it”. We can only hope that she says this knowing that there are a lot of new homes in the pipeline.
Let’s assume, then, that the Welsh Government does achieve the 2026 target. It is by no means the end of the problem. Demand for affordable housing is sky-high. In April this year there were more than 11,500 homeless people placed in temporary accommodation such as bed and breakfasts or hostels, including 354 children. And the numbers are growing as people move in to temporary accommodation faster than others move out into a permanent home. On top of this are 139,000 people on social housing waiting lists, including 8,000 in Cardiff alone. In other words, welcome though 20,000 affordable new homes will be, they will only scratch the surface of the housing crisis.
The Welsh Government will be justifiably pleased if it does hit the target in 2026. But now is not the time to sit back: the scale of the housing crisis is such that there need to be more affordable homes in 2027, in 2028, in 2029 and beyond. The target that the Welsh Government is struggling to reach works out at 4,000 homes a year. And if that sounds a lot, think of this: between the mid-1940s and the mid-1970s, twice as many new social homes were built each year – an average of around 8,000.
Looking ahead, then, there must be a sustained programme of affordable house building, right to the end of the decade and into the 2030s. That needs a longer-term approach than the electoral cycle permits, and it also needs the many and various barriers in the system to be resolved. While we can cross our fingers and hope that the former Housing Secretary is right that the target will be met, those 20,000 homes are just a start.
