Housing crisis: Government promises a million new homes in less than five years

A million homes in this parliament

The government says it will aim to build a million homes by 2020 in a bid to tackle Britain’s worsening housing shortage.

According to the BBC, housing minister Brandon Lewis said the target of a million would help to tackle a “decades old deficit”.

Lewis also added that he wanted to make it easier for developments to go ahead, “especially on brownfield sites”.

The National Housing Federation estimates that just half of the 974,000 homes needed between 2001 and 2014 were actually built.

Lewis added: “Ultimately, it is up to local authorities to look at what their housing needs are and where they feel it is appropriate to build.

“I trust local people to get that right.”

National Housing Federation director of policy and external affairs Gill Payne told the BBC: “Skyrocketing rents and ballooning house prices are eating up more and more of people’s wages and forcing people out of their local communities or into smaller, lower quality housing.

“We haven’t built enough homes in this country for decades, and if the gap between the number of households forming and the number of new homes being built continues to grow, we are in danger of not being able to house our children.”

Now read

Exclusive: Corbyn could be prime minister and Tories must take him seriously, says Zac Goldsmith