Gavin Smart tells annual CIH conference we ‘absolutely must’ build more homes
The chief executive of the Chartered Institute for Housing has called on the government to do more to support housing developers to build.
In his opening address to the CIH’s annual conference in Manchester yesterday, Smart said: “Recently government appears to have pulled back somewhat from its target to build 300,000 homes each year.
“But we absolutely must build more if we are to shift the dial on this housing crisis.
“This really matters because there are currently hundreds of thousands of people living in temporary accommodation, over a million people waiting for social homes and, of course, an untold number of low-income renters struggling in, for now at least, precarious private renting.”
Smart said that although building and maintaining affordable, energy-efficient and good-quality housing is “more important than ever”, “we need to be realistic about how many balls we can juggle, without further government support.”
The speech came hours after Housing Today launched it’s A Fair Deal for Housing campaign to get Britain building more than 300,000 homes a year
The campaign calls on the government to re-commit to its manifesto pledge of building 300,000 homes a year by the middle of the decade. This follows ministers appearing to back away from promising to meet the pledge and the government scrapping some of its proposed radical planning measures to boost delivery.
Housing Today will over the next few months look at current barriers to increasing delivery and work with the industry to develop a detailed package of solutions and asks for the government. A Fair Deal for Housing is already supported by the Home Builders Federation, the G15 group of the biggest housing associations in London, the National Federation of Builders (including the House Builders Association) the British Property Federation, Federation of Master Builders and the Land Promoters and Developers Federation.
A FAIR DEAL FOR HOUSING
Housing Today believes the government should not back away from its manifesto pledge of building 300,000 new homes a year by the middle of the decade. We badly need more homes and a lack of supply is a major factor in creating problems of affordability for both buyers and renters.
Over the next few months, Housing Today will be exploring potential solutions to help us ramp up housebuilding to 300,000. These are likely to, include different ways of working, funding asks of government and policy ideas that could boost housebuilding.
We want to hear from you: what do you think can make a difference at a policy level?
What can the industry do better?
We believe that, with the right commitments from ministers and the industry, it is possible to build more homes and help the government to meet its objectives to “build beautiful”, improve quality and safety, boost home ownership and level up the UK.
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