MP’s crisis alert over lack of new house-building

According to figures obtained from the Homes and Communities Agency, new starts in Yorkshire and the Humber fell by 79 per cent last year, from 2,503 in 2010/11 to 531 in 2011/12.

Hugh Bayley, the Labour MP for York Central who released the figures, said there were 34 new home starts in York in 2010/11, but none in 2011/12.

“The Government is failing families in York who are in desperate need of a home,” he said.

“We have a growing housing crisis and the Government’s policies are making it worse.

“Labour has called on the Government to take action by repeating the bankers’ bonus tax to fund 25,000 new affordable homes while proposing a one year cut in VAT on home improvements, repairs and maintenance to help home owners, small businesses and create much-needed jobs and apprenticeships.”

He added: “This Government needs to think less about grabbing headlines and more about tackling the worsening housing crisis.”

Mr Bayley’s comments follow figures revealed in an investigation by the Yorkshire Post earlier this year, that show the failure to meet affordable housing need has spread across the region, with local authorities falling woefully short of annual affordable home building targets, and a growing tension between councils and developers.

In North Yorkshire, where soaring house prices have placed it at the sharp end of the country’s affordable homes crisis, only 377 affordable dwellings have been built in the first six months of the last financial year despite an annual need of 2,808 over the next five years.

Meanwhile, East Riding Council calculates just 69 affordable homes – classed as houses below market cost available for rent or sale – have been built over the same period despite a requirement of 1,008 a year up to 2016.

The problem has also spread to Yorkshire’s major cities where families are now being forced to live together in unsuitable overcrowded homes on a scale experts say has not seen for more than 50 years.

Sheffield Council says 165 affordable homes were built last year despite an annual need of 729.

Our investigation has also found that the vast majority of the recent affordable home completions have been with public subsidies which are quickly drying up.

Last week, a report released by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation made a number of urgent recommendations to the Government to help address the growing housing crisis gripping a generation of young people across the nation.

The study, entitled housing options and solutions for young people in 2020, found an extra 1.5m 18 to 30-year-olds will be forced into private renting in just eight years’ time.

An extra half a million young people will be forced to stay with their parents well into their 30s, taking the total number to 3.7m by 2020.

Meanwhile, the number of house buyers under 30 will nearly halve, with just 1.3m expected to own their own homes.

The number of homeless people under 25 is predicted to rise to 81,000 across the country, with it rising for the first time in seven years in Yorkshire during the last financial year.

Housing Minister Grant Shapps has said over the last year the Government has paid out £431m in New Homes Bonus funding for the delivery of 159,000 more homes – including more than 14,000 in Yorkshire and the Humber.

Mr Shapps says it has also pledged £4.5bn to its Affordable Homes programme which is set to exceed expectations and will deliver up to 170,000 homes over the next four years.