Home Ownership in England

Home Ownership in England

Home ownership in England has fallen to its lowest level in 30 years,while more and more people both young and old are privately renting their homes.

Government statistics show almost half of all people in England aged 25 to 34 pay a private landlord for their accommodation, seen as "less worries" in a turbulent age.

"An Englishman's home is his castle, not any more,due to changing circumstances,changed perceptions.

Corbyn's Labour opposition have criticised the Tories for "running out of ideas" and have no long term plan to fixing the "housing crisis." Their concern at the moment is to provide affordable housing.

The Government is of two minds releasing "Green Belt" land for house building. It has, however, attempted to streamline Planning Permission,particularly to cut the existing red tape. The last Autumn Budget 2017 included spending plans worth £44 billion over the next five years,hoping to increase housing stock by 300,000 new homes a year.

With everyone's  mind over the past 19 months on Brexit,there appear to be other priorities.But rarely has a solution to a problem seem so easy to imagine, yet so hard to implement. 

The number of home completions in this same past period in England been lower than anywhere else in Europe,in relation to population. 

Britain says it needs to build more houses in overcrowded areas and it is hoped sooner than later.

The country's biggest house builder,Barratt's has gone a stage further and has trialled a number of off site technologies,looking at ways to improve efficiency. 

Barratts,which is celebrating its 60th year in housebuilding,states it has built around 1270 homes using timber frames in the past six months. It is now completing trials of light gauge steel frames and larger size brick.It maintains it is able to provide similar benefits,such as increased build speed,reducing the reliance on traditional timber construction methods. 

With increased standardisation,simplified construction and reduced build costs making for improved efficiency, Barratts state they can reduce the demand for labour.

They are on track to pay special dividends to their shareholders over the past five years up to November 2019,totalling £1.9 billion, averaging some £175 million over each of these years.

According to The Guardian, "developers are sitting on land without building anything,then selling it for profit - a vicious circle that can make it impossible to create affordable homes". This is called "Land Banking".

According to the Valuation Office,"the average price of agricultural land is £21,000 per hectare,while land with planning permission for housing is around £6 million per hectare".

Shelter,the housing charity, has called for developers to pay Council Tax on unbuilt sites with permission,while others advocate more fundamental reform,including the introduction of a Land Value Tax. 

Berkley, Barratts, Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey ( the biggest four companies in the industry) account for more than 480,000 of the building plots in England.

Victor Cherubim