Communities and Local Government
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Direct contact 020 7944 4400- contactus@communities.gov.uk
- Housing
- Housing supply
- Housing supply strategy
- Affordability
Affordability
The Government believes that everyone should have the opportunity of a decent home at a price they can afford, in a place they want to live now and in the future, that promotes opportunity and a better quality of life in a secure and attractive environment.
A long term gap between supply and demand for housing has led to high levels of house price inflation, with the result that many people who would like to access the housing market are unable to. Housing supply must be increased to address this.
However, whilst more housing is needed, it must be well designed and built in a properly planned strategic way, contributing to the Government's sustainable development objectives of creating mixed sustainable communities and of protecting, and where possible , enhancing, the natural and global environment.
Good progress has been made in recent years on increasing housing supply - from a low of around 130,000 additional homes in 2001-02 nationally, housing supply has increased to around 185,000 in 2005-06. However, the most recent household projections indicate that household formation is expected on average to be 223,000 per year to 2026. This underlines the fact that we must go further to address national problems of affordability.
Our main policy measures to increase supply were published in July 2007 in the Homes for the future: more affordable, more sustainable (the Housing Green Paper), which set out a target to increase housing supply progressively to 240,000 per year by 2016, delivering around two million additional homes by that time and maintaining that level to deliver approximately three million in total by 2020.
The Green Paper also announced a range of supporting measures.
