Covid-19 hinders government hitting ‘ambitious’ target for new homes
Covid-19 has knocked the government additional off track from its housebuilding targets, a examine has revealed, with solely 94,000 new homes constructed throughout the first 9 months of 2020.
The first wave of coronavirus led to the temporary closure of construction sites final spring, leaving output nicely beneath the 300,000 new homes a yr which the Conservatives pledged of their manifesto, in keeping with analysis by the Resolution Foundation thinktank.
The government goals to ship 1,000,000 new homes by the tip of the parliament, a target the Foundation described as “highly ambitious” even earlier than the pandemic.
Lindsay Judge, analysis director on the Resolution Foundation, mentioned: “If the government wants to hit its welcome target, it should turn to the social housing sector – which historically has provided up to one-in-three new homes – to provide the supply that millions of families in Britain need.”
England’s annual housing output has solely surpassed 300,000 on six events for the reason that finish of the second world battle. Building exercise plunged final March, when development websites had been closed because the coronavirus outbreak first took maintain, causing private housing output to slump by 60% in April. However, development rebounded once sites reopened with new security measures in place, and output had returned to its pre-pandemic degree by September.
The thinktank warns that the housebuilding sector faces different challenges over the approaching yr. The housing market has boomed for the reason that summer season due to the stamp duty holiday, though house prices are expected to fall when the short-term tax reduce ends on 31 March.
A decline in home costs, mixed with rising unemployment and falling family incomes would suppress new non-public housebuilding exercise within the brief time period, in keeping with the Resolution Foundation.
The UK’s potential to construct new homes can also be restricted by availability of migrant development employees, a lot of whom travelled dwelling throughout the pandemic.
The thinktank mentioned this may very well be felt most keenly in London, the place, earlier than Covid, over half of development employees had been migrants, including that it takes time to coach new employees to fill the hole.
