CIH urges Government to focus on house building in budget

Affordable house building part of CIH’s emergency budget submission.

The Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) has called on the Chancellor to help councils and housing associations build more affordable homes as part of next month’s emergency budget.

This claim was part of CIH’s emergency budget submission which also called on the Government to continue improvement of the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP), while increasing housing options as well when the emergency budget is announced on 8th July.

An independent voice for housing, the CIH is committed to giving the best and most sound advice, support and knowledge to housing professionals so that their organisations continue to flourish.

CIH is well placed to do this thanks to a broad and diverse spread of members based in the private and public sectors.

The organisation rightly sees next month’s emergency budget as a crucial element in the Government’s quest to address the housing supply crisis while also solving housing needs of people up and down the country.

With the Government promising to provide 275,000 homes by 2020 thanks to the AHP, CIH say in the report that provisions already in place must not be reduced and indeed, given the latest evidence on the demand for housing, these resources allocated to the programme should be increased.

Under the AHP, funding allocated in 2014’s Autumn Statement gave £4.7Bn to the delivery of the homes, which will see 55,000 created each year.

CIH’s belief that resources should not be lessened is rooted in the fact that the average amount of money for each dwelling has actually decreased in comparison the the similar programme that ended last March.

Indeed, because of new housing predictions that show England will need to construct 220,000 new homes each year up to 2022 in order to match household growth, and with the output from the private sector not enough to match this demand, CIH believes that more resources should be committed to AHP.

The Organisation’s own projections show that more than 85,000 units each year will have to be provided by social landlords so that demand for the construction of new homes is matched.

But, in order to tackle the backlog as well, added to the likelihood that grant levels will not be extended, it means that more resources will surely be required.

As a result, CIH has urged the Government to review the AHP provisions this year with the idea in mind that more resources be deployed to strengthen the delivery of AHP from the beginning of next year and beyond.

Gavin Smart is the Deputy Chief Executive of CIH and he said it is “critical” that the Government continue to commit to helping in the delivery of affordable homes.

He said: “As we continue to face a housing supply crisis, it’s critical that the Government does everything it can to support housing associations and councils to develop new affordable homes, to maximise the role they can play in building new homes alongside private developers.

“A welcome first step would be to confirm that the commitment in last year’s autumn statement to fund 275,000 new affordable homes remains in place.

“We think the Government should also be looking at other steps it can take to support new affordable house building, including by local authorities.”

This is an important issue in both house building and construction markets and the full submission from CIH can be found on their official website.

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