More housing: what about rural?

“We will need to think about building in rural areas too.” [Housing Federation]

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The government has committed to build 1 million homes over this Parliament – with the prime minister stating: “We won’t do that by concreting over the countryside – our plan is to build the right homes where there is the most need and where there is local support, in the heart of Britain’s great cities.”

There are some caveats, though. Firstly, the Independent reminds that “two weeks ago a cross-party panel of MPs warned that Tory ministers are unlikely to deliver 300,000 new homes per year after the prime minister made the target advisory rather than mandatory.”

And, as reported by the Mail, “the Local Government Association (LGA) flagged concerns about the prospect of loosening the rules around permitted development rights, arguing it can lead to substandard housing.”

On the other hand, the Housing Federation is complaining about the ‘lack of ambition’. As their chief executive Kate Henderson said:

From what we’ve heard this morning, there’s some ambition there to develop in cities, which is absolutely needed. And Michael Gove is very ambitious about housing and social housing in particular. But from what I’ve seen today so far … this is relatively piecemeal. We have such a severe shortage of housing in this country, 4.2 million people are currently in need of a social home and 2 million children are living in overcrowding. So there’s some positive signs today but this is nowhere near the scale of ambition that we need to meet housing need in this country …

We need 90,000 socially rented homes each year, and last year, we built around 6,500. So against those key metrics, we need to have a much more ambitious plan … We need something much bigger … I mean, wouldn’t it be great to have a long term plan that looked at ending children, families being stuck in temporary accommodation? Or ending children, families being stuck in overcrowding?

Interestingly, she went on to say that building new homes in urban areas was not enough: “I’m afraid we can’t meet our housing need just by building in towns and cities. We will need to think about building in rural areas too.”

The Rural Services Network is a little jittery about the prime minister’s announcement, asking what it means for rural:

“Once again rural has been overlooked in Government policy. We were concerned to see the Prime Minister state that: ‘We won’t do that by concreting over the countryside – our plan is to build the right homes where there is the most need and where there is local support, in the heart of Britain’s great cities…’ What about our rural communities?”