housing shortage

The UK’s commitment to achieving net zero by 2050 is more than a climate target—it is a societal imperative. It intersects with the housing crisis and energy poverty, but recent assessments indicate that we are behind schedule. Meeting the sixth carbon budget and achieving an 81% emissions reduction by 2035, as recommended by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), will require bold action and financial innovation. Crucially, this includes transforming how we heat homes, as heating accounts for a third of emissions. The financial tipping point—when renewable heating solutions like heat pumps become not just environmentally preferable but economically accessible—is central to progress. Housing Association Magazine’s Joe Bradbury discusses:

The housing shortage has its roots in the 1980s. It’s hard to believe that in 2023 there is still a chronic shortage of social housing. More people than ever before are battling to find a safe and secure place to live. Nonetheless, STILL we do not build enough social housing. Over a million households are on the waiting list for social housing. According to Shelter, 29,000 social homes were sold or demolished last year, whilst only 7,000 new ones were erected. Housing Association Magazine Editor Joe Bradbury investigates:

With a healthy majority, what should the priority be for our Prime Minister?

George Clarke has a simple message for our PM and it’s all about fixing the housing crisis in the right way

New Year’s Eve lies well behind us now as a milestone, sadly marking the end of another year of failure in housing policy. Home ownership feels like an impossible dream for the masses. Untold numbers of people are being pushed into homelessness. Where is it all going wrong? Housing Association Magazine’s Joe Bradbury takes a look:

The current housing crisis wasn’t created by some ‘housing crisis god in the sky’. It didn’t just happen by chance. Government created this crisis. They made it happen. Nobody else.
Yes, as a society the industry and businesses respond to government policies and there is no doubt that many have added to the crisis, but the simple fact remains that successive weak governments, poor housing government policies and ineffective housing ministers have created, a ‘broken housing system’.

Whatever your stance is on Brexit, immigration compounding the housing shortage was an important motivating factor that led many people to opt out of the EU. The subsequent uncertainty has resulted in many EU nationals leaving the UK; has that made the housing crisis any better? Or was decades of chronic under investment from all political parties (sadly still prevalent today) really to blame all along? Housing Association Magazine Editor Joe Bradbury investigates…

Way back in December 2012, Prime Minister Theresa May claimed in an evocative speech that over a third of all new housing demand in Britain was as a direct result of immigration: “There is evidence that without the demand caused by mass immigration, house prices could be 10% lower over a 20-year period,” she commented.