Focus On: Housing - Families in limbo as Britain loses its battle to build homes

Behind every door is a story of success or struggle. But in Britain's broken housing market, too many are locked out, priced out, and the cost is counted in lives left in limbo.

ITV News Investigations Editor Daniel Hewitt has this special report

Britain isn’t building enough homes for the number of people who live here. Nowhere near enough.

Estimates of the shortfall range between 2.5 million and 4 million homes. At the current pace of progress, the backlog won’t be cleared for many decades.

We haven’t heard politicians talking about it much during this election campaign.

The policies of the two biggest political parties to tackle the housing crisis are not radically dissimilar either.

We know voters care about housing - to some it is more pressing than others, of course. It ranks in the top five election issues, according to the pollster Ipsos.

In a campaign largely bogged down in murky accusations and allegations, the personal and at at times the provincial has so often taken precedence over policy and planning for the long term.

Housing is all about the long term. Housing isn’t sexy. Housing is technical, complicated and time-consuming, and the electoral rewards for doing something about it are not always immediate.

It is hard for the parties to grab headlines on housing and when they attempt to - like the promise to build 300,000 homes a year or scrap leasehold or reform the private rental sector - they have not always proven particularly credible.

I will focus here on England, where the crisis is particularly acute. Housing is devolved in the rest of the UK.

The Conservatives and Labour have both said they will build an average of 300,000 houses (in fact the Tories say 320,000 ) per year in their manifestos.

For context, the last time more than 300,000 homes were built in England was in 1977.

Back then, England’s councils were building the majority of homes. In 1979, 42% of the country lived in a council house. Today it is 8%.

Margaret Thatcher rocket-boosted the Right to Buy policy - an election winner but dubbed a long-term disaster by councils who are now operating in a post-Thatcherite landscape decimated of desperately needed social housing (by far the cheapest form of rent).

Mrs Thatcher allowed council tenants to purchase their homes at a generous discount but stopped councils from using the money to build new ones.

The stock, as a result, has dropped and dropped.

Council housing was not just a safety net for a stable, more secure life.

For many, including almost my entire family, it was a springboard to happy, successful lives - a route out of the slum-dominated, unaffordable and poorly regulated private rental sector of the 1960s and 1970s.

That dream is dead for the majority of people who need one today.

The consequences have been dire. Homelessness is once again on the rise. The number of children living in temporary accommodation is today the highest on record.

There are 1.3 million households on the social housing waiting list. Some councils are pushed to the brink of bankruptcy, spending millions placing homeless families (who they are legally obliged to house) in expensive hotels, hostels and bed and breakfasts.

They don’t have the homes anymore, and they increasingly don’t have the money either.

To consistently build 300,000 plus homes a year will need more than just private developers. It will require more social housing.

Practically all of the main parties say they will ensure more social homes are built.

Shelter, the National Housing Federation, Crisis et al estimate England needs at least 90,000 new social homes each year just to keep up with demand.

The Liberal Democrats and the Green Party say they would bring forward 150,000 a year. Labour and the Conservatives haven’t put a number on it.

Reform UK has not pledged to build more, they just say “foreign nationals must go to the back of the queue” when it comes to accessing housing and prioritise a tax break for private landlords.

Again for context 9,561 social homes were built in England last year, but 22,023 were either sold or demolished.

So at a time when almost everyone agrees we need the most affordable type of homes, we are still losing them.

Labour’s promises have been largely announced pre-election and not expanded on during this campaign.

They will reform the planning system - a major obstacle to housebuilding approvals - after Keir Starmer declared himself a ‘YIMBY’ (Yes In My Back Yard).

They would not only build on brownfield sites but also parts of the greenbelt, what they call the ‘greenbelt - areas of land not designated as areas of natural beauty but disused car parks and wasteland.

Labour would also build several ‘new towns’ which they say would include 40% affordable homes. The Lib Dems would build 10 new 'garden cities, not to be outdone.

When Labour announced its reforms to the private rental sector last week, the charities and campaigners I spoke to responded with the proverbial shrug of the shoulders.

The view in the sector is their plans, generally, lack ambition with nothing to say about restricting the ability of landlords to raise rent by unlimited amounts.

The Green Party, for instance, promises to introduce rent controls.

The Conservatives are promising many of the things they pledged in 2019 but simply haven’t done.

This includes scrapping no-fault evictions and building 1.6 million homes by the end of the next parliament.

They would also permanently abolish the stamp duty levy for first-time buyers on properties up to £425,000.

There’s actually very little difference between the two parties, except the Conservatives have ruled out building on the greenbelt and will focus housebuilding on brownfield sites and urban redevelopment.

Speaking to developers and land agents this week, they point to the decision last year by the Conservative government to remove the obligation on local councils to meet centrally-set housing targets as a disaster for housebuilding.

In 2023 approvals for new homes dropped by almost 30% across England compared to 2019. Labour has promised to restore targets.

Neither party is offering anything particularly radical, given the scale of the crisis. Certainly nothing akin to the ambitions of the post-war Labour and Conservative governments who gripped Britain’s housing crisis with ambitious plans to build hundreds of thousands of new homes.

The average age of a first-time buyer in 2011 was 29. It is now 32 and rising. Rental costs have skyrocketed to record levels.

Children are trapped in temporary homes living transient lives, with more social homes still being sold off rather than built.

Whoever forms the next government may have to start thinking more radically, and quickly.

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