BUSINESS

PAC: Government lacks ambition on housing

The Government lacks the necessary ambition to solve the housing crisis and is overly reliant on a ‘broken’ market to deliver the homes people need, MPs have argued.

The Government lacks the necessary ambition to solve the housing crisis and is overly reliant on a ‘broken' market to deliver the homes people need, MPs have argued.

A Public Account Committee (PAC) report said the number of homes built in England had lagged behind demand for decades.

It warned the human costs of this crisis was illustrated by the growing problem of homelessness, with the number of families living in temporary accommodation rising from 50,000 in 2011/12 to 72,000 in 2015/16.

The report said the Department for Communities and Local Government's (DCLG) lack of ambition on this ‘fundamental issue' was matched only by its lack of information.

MPs said the DCLG's lack of information was particularly noticeable when it came to the impacts and value for money of the roughly £21bn the Government spends each year on housing benefit.

And the committee said the Government's plans to build one million new homes by the end of this Parliament would not come close to meeting the actual level of housing needed to solve the crisis.

The MPs also warned this situation would not change while the Government remained dependent on the existing ‘broken' market, which they said was dominated by a handful of private developers.

Separately, MPs on the Communities and Local Government (CLG) Committee said Whitehall should do more to encourage councils to build more.
 
The CLG report found building of homes by local authorities had ‘almost ceased' and warned borrowing caps on councils' Housing Revenue Accounts were limiting their ability to build and should be raised or - in the areas where housing affordability is at its worst - removed.
 
Committee chair Clive Betts said: ‘The housing market is broken - we are simply not building enough homes.
 
‘Local authorities have a key role to play but have not been given the tools they need to make an effective contribution to solving this crisis.'

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