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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 December 2024
Introduction
Conservative housing policy is based on two key commitments: increasing home ownership (going back to the 1920s); and promoting a market in renting for those who cannot afford or prefer not to buy their own home (particularly since the 1980s). This chapter considers Conservative policies since 2015 on new housebuilding, changes in housing tenure, homelessness, housing conditions and ‘levelling up’. It concludes that these policies have largely failed, or are very likely to fail, to meet their aims. In some cases, they seem irrelevant to meeting need or serving a public good.
Responsibility for housing in the UK is devolved to its constituent nations (Torrance, 2022), so for the sake of brevity, this chapter focuses on England.
300,000 new homes a year?
The total numbers of households in England rose by an average of around 200,000 a year in the 1950s and 1960s, 130,000 a year in the 1970s, 200,000 a year in the 1980s, and 110,000 a year in the 1990s. From 2000 to 2010– 11 the numbers increased by a total of approximately 1.6 million (an average of around 160,000 a year), and from 2010– 11 to 2020– 21 they rose by approximately 2.1 million (an average of around 210,000 a year; Table 9.1). In comparison, housing completions in England averaged just over 114,000 a year from 2011 to 2014, and slightly over 159,000 a year from 2015 to 2021 (Table 9.2). Therefore, although housing completions have increased significantly since 2015, they are still sufficient only to meet the level of increased demand from 2000 to 2010, and they fall far short of meeting the increased demand from 2010 to 2020, which would require at least 210,000 new homes a year (and this takes no account of pent-up housing demand from earlier years, and indeed decades).
In their 2015 election manifesto, the Conservatives committed to delivering a million new homes by the end of 2020 (Conservative Party, 2015). In their 2017 election manifesto, they reaffirmed this commitment and added a further commitment to ‘deliver half a million more by the end of 2022’ (Conservative Party, 2017, p 70).
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