Councils have walked away from pledges to build 100,000 social homes since being told by central Government to scrap building targets, Construction News reported.
A study carried out for the National Housing Federation, and broadcast on Channel 4 News, said the number included 10,750 homes in North Somerset, 9,600 in Bristol, 9,200 in North Hertfordshire and Stevenage and 3,000 in Exeter.
Before being scrapped by the current administration, housing affordability watchdog the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit had warned that 240,000 houses needed to be built just to reach demand.
But Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has since abandoned the “soviet” plans put in place by Labour to ensure the construction of three million new homes by 2020, telling councils to draw up their own plans.
In an exchange on Channel 4 News, Peter Williams of the NHPAU said that he believed fewer homes will be built in the future.
“The likelihood is that we will see fewer homes being built and affordability pressures get worse. The prospects for first time buyers look extremely difficult and not likely to get any better in the near future,” he said.
But housing minister Grant Shapps responded that targets were not responsible for building homes.
“Regional spatial strategies don’t build homes,” he said. “Under the previous government the number of new homes being started slumped to the lowest levels since 1924.
“Despite tough economic times, we’ve managed to safeguard funding for thousands of new and affordable homes, which the last government had left unfunded.”
In a separate story, Building reported that Leeds has become the first major northern city to scale back housebuilding plans after the abolition of regional spatial strategies.
The council has confirmed plans to halve housebuilding targets, and said the move would help it to prevent greenfield development on the edge of the city.
The council voted to reject the 4,740-home annual target for new homes, contained in the adopted regional spatial strategy (RSS), and replace it with a target of 2,300 homes a year.
It rejected an appeal by the Home Builders Federation (HBF), which argued that the decision would disadvantage non-homeowners and “the wider Leeds economy”.
