{"id":894558,"date":"2026-04-15T00:36:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T00:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/894558\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T00:36:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T00:36:16","slug":"england-faces-historic-housing-shortfall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/894558\/","title":{"rendered":"England faces historic housing shortfall"},"content":{"rendered":"

The number of households in England is projected to rise by 17% to 27.6 million by 2040 causing significant demographic change.<\/p>\n

This would intensify pressure on an already stretched housing market, according to new research by multi-disciplinary development consultancy\u00a0Marrons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The findings highlight a growing imbalance between supply and demand, with more than 1.3 million households on local authority housing registers in 2025 and more than 320,600 social homes projected to be lost by 2040 if current trends continue.<\/p>\n

The largest household growth is projected in the South West (20%), followed by the East Midlands, East of England, Greater London and the South East (18% each), while the North East is forecast to experience the slowest rise at 14%.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the housing market faces a generational squeeze \u2013 first-time buyer households (25-44) are set to grow by 14% to 16.1 million, student-age and young professional households (19-24) by 9% to 710,800, and later living households (65+) by 36% to 9.4 million \u2013 reshaping demand across all tenures and housing types.<\/p>\n

Dan Usher<\/a>, economics director at Marrons, who specialises in housing need evidence, said: \u201cWe are heading towards a structural mismatch between the homes England needs and the homes being delivered.<\/p>\n

\u201cHousehold growth is accelerating across all age groups, but supply \u2013 particularly in social and affordable housing \u2013 is not keeping pace.<\/p>\n

\"\"Dan Usher, economics director at Marrons<\/p>\n

Difficult and costly to resolve<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe scale of projected losses to social housing, combined with record waiting lists, points to a system under sustained strain. Without intervention, affordability pressures will intensify and access to homeownership will become increasingly out of reach for many.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework, particularly policy HO7, place greater weight on delivering homes that meet evidenced need. This makes robust, up-to-date data more important than ever in supporting planning applications and unlocking sites.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge isn\u2019t just how many homes are built but whether they reflect the way people actually live \u2013 and will live \u2013 in the years ahead. Without a step change in delivery, we risk locking in a housing crisis that will become far more difficult and costly to resolve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in May 2024, Marrons has drawn on the latest datasets to update its Housing 2040 report. The new edition incorporates Office for National Statistics 2022-based household projections, published in October 2025 \u2013 the first in more than five years \u2013 covering overall 16+ household growth and age demographic breakdowns.<\/p>\n

Supplementing this is local authority housing register data for 2025, providing a real-time view of unmet social housing need, alongside social housing stock movements from 2014\/15 to 2023\/24, including demolitions, Right to Buy sales and new completions.<\/p>\n

The full findings, published in Housing 2040: Phase II<\/a>, provide a region-by-region snapshot of England\u2019s projected housing needs \u2013 offering a roadmap for developers, investors, registered providers and local authorities to plan homes that meet current and future demand.<\/p>\n

Share this article …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of households in England is projected to rise by 17% to 27.6 million by 2040 causing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":894559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[748,393,4884,79597,16,70016,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-894558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-new-homes","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-uk-housing-crisis","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116405927102676941","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}