Thursday, September 05, 2024
Wales underlines the problems Labour face in meeting its English housing targets
This is something that ministers cannot rely on the private sector to enable. If the UK government is serious about providing homes where they are most needed then they will have to provide significant amounts of public subsidy and ensure that local councils and housing associations are sufficiently resourced to build the social housing that is required. They will also need to invest in infrastructure.
The Welsh Labour Government has already learnt this lesson. They have been in government here for over twenty-five years and yet there is an escalating housing crisis, so much so that homeless families with children are sitting in temporary accommodation behind other homeless families on council waiting lists because there is not enough social housing to go around and it is taking too long to build more.
Now the BBC report that fewer than half the 20,000 homes promised by Welsh Labour in its manifesto at the last Senedd election have been built. Audit Wales have found that the Welsh government could fall more than 4,000 homes short of its target by March 2026:
Ministers have already said rising prices had threatened to stop them creating all the low-carbon social homes they wanted in this Senedd term.
According to the latest estimate, the plan will cost around £1.8bn.
But Audit Wales estimates an extra £580m to £740m will be needed.
Its report says progress has been “slow and more expensive than initially expected”.
Up to 9,197 homes have been delivered so far, with 10,000 more in the pipeline.
That falls just short of the target, but the report estimates that without the additional funding, only between 15,860 and 16,670 homes will be delivered
“If the Welsh government is to meet the 20,000 social homes target by March 2026 it will need to spend significantly more than planned,” the report says.
It adds that there is a “high probability” that some of the “riskier schemes” will not happen, regardless of how much is spent.
Inflation, outside the Welsh government’s control has driven up the cost of building new homes.
In response, the Welsh government has paid for councils to buy or lease more homes, which also count towards the 20,000 target.
However, not all those homes are new or low carbon.
Auditor General Adrian Crompton said a lack of capacity in the planning system and complying with environmental regulations had delayed progress.
He said: “It (the Welsh government) is going to have to spend significantly more than it has currently planned for, and secondly, it’s going to need to deliver all the schemes in its pipeline of plans – and we think there’s quite a high risk some of those schemes won’t deliver in time or at all, regardless of the level of funding available.”
A Welsh government spokesperson said: “There are a range of factors impacting housing supply, not least the recent sustained period of record inflationary pressures, which has made achieving the target even more challenging.
“Tackling homelessness and delivering more homes is a key priority for this government and we have set a challenging target and allocated record levels of funding to housing supply in this Senedd term, with more than £1.4bn invested so far.”
These are the same sort of problems that the new English housing minister is going to face in meeting their target. Perhaps they should come across the Severn Bridge for a briefing.
