Even though the new legislation was placed on
hold because of the recent General Election, it is expected the Government will
start fining around half of all UK local authorities for failing to build
enough new homes as Westminster starts to force local authorities to build more
homes with the new laws.
The Conservative Government has gone on record
with an ambition to build 300,000 new homes each year from the mid-2020s
(aspiring as the average for the last 13 years has only been 177,000 pa). So
Downing Street see the planning system as requiring root and branch change to
ensure local authorities deliver on that promise. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local
Government’s ‘Housing Delivery Test’, which should be launched on an undetermined
date this year, will hold local authorities to account for ensuring they hit
their own specific house building targets.
If a local authority is unable to show that it
has a five-year stock of land for building new homes, it gives builders greater
rights and liberties to build their new homes where the builder wants (not
where the local authority wants).
This will mean there will be a house-building
free-for-all
as the council will have less control over the
setting, types of properties, contribution to infrastructure and location of any
new home development.
Only 44% of local authorities have a local
plan that is less than five years old.
Locally, Kirklees is in that 44% of local
authorities, having had a local plan in place within the last five years.
Yet, the original question of this article was
to find out if we are building enough homes in Huddersfield and the surrounding
local authority area i.e. should we get the builders in? Well, the Government
set targets for local authorities for the number of homes they should build
each year. The latest set of data is for 2018, so for the three years up to and
including 2018 i.e. 2016/2017/2018,
New home building target for Kirklees was 4,516
new homes, yet it achieved 3,399, a shortfall of 1,117 new homes
So, what does that all mean for the Huddersfield
property market?
Even with the shortfall, there are positive
and negatives to this. The Huddersfield property market is not broken, yet it does
need to get the builders in. Irrespective of the results from the last
three years, we have over three decades of under building, which has created
issues regarding affordability of homeownership and older generations being
stuck in homes too big because there aren’t enough suitable homes for them to move
to, i.e. bungalows. The stabilisation of the General Election has been a net positive
to overall confidence in the local property market, meaning Huddersfield
homeowners and Huddersfield landlords looking to sell their home in the coming spring
and summer will find decent demand (although sellers still need to realistic
with their pricing).
Unfortunately, the negatives are that many Huddersfield
renters that want to buy, are unable to as they can’t save after paying their
rents and feel as if they’ve been left behind. I know the Government recently
launched their “First Homes” scheme for
selected first time buyers at the start of February,
where a 30% discount would apply to “a proportion of new homes” and would be
subsidised out of contributions from builders, the Tory’s have previously promised to build 200,000 cut price homes
for first time buyers back in 2015, yet the National Audit Office has recently
confirmed they never built a single one!
The simple fact is, we as a country need to
build far more affordable homes in the areas where people want them. This means
the dream of homeownership will be a greater possibility for our children and
grandchildren in the future. Our local authority needs to continue to plan the
housing needs (and associated infrastructure) to ensure that as we live longer
and continue to grow as country - we have the homes in place to live in that
are suitable for every generation.
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