If you’ve read anything about housing over the past few years you probably know that we don’t have enough of it in the UK.

To paint a stark picture, there are roughly 1.3 million households on UK social housing waiting lists today. Approximately 159,000 children are without a home.

To match the demand, there needs to be a significant bump in the level of affordable housing being built. It’s estimated England alone will need about 145,000 affordable homes built each year between now and 2031 to clear backlogs . Today, about 40,000-50,000 are being constructed on an annual basis.

The UK’s Labour government has been vocal about its ambition to super-charge homebuilding. It’s target of 375,000 new homes a year (equating to more than 1.5 million over five years) is ambitious – the UK hasn’t seen such construction activity in almost 60 years during a time when the public sector accounted for roughly 50% of housing delivery. Such a dynamic is unlikely to reoccur today, in our view.

Read the full ‘Thought Leadership’ article at the link below