Apparently according to The Torygraph and UKIP (Yawn) it would take a house to be built every 7 minutes to cover immigration alone. We have always needed social housing for those that just don't fit into "the big society", but that is just half the problem.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...-new-house-every-seven-minutes-says-Ukip.html
I would say those figures sadly are fairly accurate.
I am with Kay on this 100% . My son works up to 7 days a week, his partner works,my grandson is coming up to 3 now. They have no chance whatsoever of buying their own house. Living and trying to save up a deposit is just impossible for them. It is bad enough rents have gone through the roof and it is unfair on the younger people. Those on the ridiculous Zero hour bollocks, well they have no future until the government ban it.
Selling off the council bank of houses to those that are sitting on their asses is totally wrong IMO.. If Thatcher had invested the Millions the government reaped in on new social housing (which was wrong from day 1) that would of been great, but of course that never happened it just went into the coffers.
I am currently doing some some work for a social housing project, where around 30 - 40 per cent of applications for housing are from people recently settled in the UK.
All of the 30 per cent currently receive high priority banding as they are technically homeless, and of course this does give the applicant a head start over someone like yours or Kays son or anyone else that is sitting in the system but hasn't moved up in terms of priority banding (ie they need housing but aren't homeless).
However this is only part of the problem.
I have a relative who is single and retired that lives in a 3 bed council house, clearly she doesn't need 3 bedrooms but has a life tenancy...again unfair on young families who would need that size of accommodation.
That's before we look at housing stock available, and I know of instances where Councils have bought back homes that were purchased by tenants under the right to buy scheme!
There simply isn't enough stock, so I guess that drives rents up and makes housing per se unaffordable for many putting additional pressure on social housing.
Land Banking is another issue where there are many builders / developers sitting on land but not building despite having consent to do so.
Some interesting stats as follows (will see if I can find some more up to date ones);
In 2012/13 England had one of the lowest house building rates since 1923 – there were just 108,190 completions.
Affordability has plummeted – in the last 40 years the average house price to salary ratio has almost doubled; the price of the average home purchased is now almost 7x the average annual salary of the buyer.
First time buyers are at record lows. Eight out of ten first-time buyers require financial help from family or friends, and the average age of unassisted first-time buyers has soared.
Close to a fifth of women and a third of men aged between 20 and 34 are still living at home.
Social Housing Waiting Lists have almost doubled in the last 10 years to 1.85 million households; around 5 million people are waiting for a home.
76,000 children live in temporary accommodation and 250,000 families in social housing are in over-crowded accommodation.
So yes a house build every 7 minutes is about right.
