Decades of lacklustre housebuilding and recent record migration have left the UK with a shortfall of more than 6.5m homes, it’s claimed.
New research from the Centre for Policy Studies claims the UK has dramatically fallen behind comparable European countries, with the result being what the CPS calls “unaffordable homes.”
The research suggests that if England had matched France’s housebuilding rate since 1982, we would have built 2.9m more homes. England’s housing stock grew over those years by 0.8% per year, compared to France’s 1.1%.
The median London worker earns 17% more than the median UK worker, according to the research, but once rent is factored in, they are actually 3% worse off. The report states: “Workers across the country are being priced out of productive areas where they could earn higher salaries, hampering economic growth and innovation.”
The analysis also evaluates the impact of the recent wave of mass migration.
In the years 2021-2023, the peak of the recent migration wave, the number of homes per capita actually fell in England despite an expanding the housing stock by 470,000 homes, as record-high migration lowered the number of homes per head. The CPS claims that if net migration had been kept to the tens of thousands since 1997, the housing gap would only be a third lower than its current level.
The research finds that on recent trends, the UK will not reach the current European average of 542 homes per 1,000 people until 2115 and a spokesperson for gig CPS says: ‘These 6.5m missing homes should be a wake-up call to policymakers from across the political spectrum. Failure to build more homes means British people, especially those in England, are being condemned to smaller, more expensive houses than our European neighbours.
“Workers are priced out of our most productive cities, and couples are unable to have the families they desire.
“It is possible to eliminate the shortage, boost wages, increase disposable income, and make the UK a fairer country generationally and regionally, but we need dramatic changes to our policies on planning, housebuilding, and immigration. The solutions are within reach – politicians just need to show their commitment to truly addressing the scale of the problem.”