Join us each week where we'll be taking a look at the UK housing headlines making the rounds!
Barclays report suggests “Right-Sizing” could free up 3.8M UK Homes
A new report from Barclays Property Insights has estimated that 85% of owner-occupied homes in England and Wales contain at least one ‘spare’ bedroom and are therefore ‘under-occupied’. Thereby constricting the availability of larger homes and causing a ripple effect throughout the housing market.
Their analysis suggests that between 1.7M-3.8M households could be persuaded to ‘right-size’ in the near future given the right policy interventions. Along with the Government’s ambitious house-building plans, this could offer a cost-effective method of addressing the UK housing supply shortfall.
The analysis offers five potential recommendations to policy makers to enact this plan, focusing on: Broadening perception of under-occupiers, targeted financial incentives, making home buying simpler, improving visibility of new housing, and building more retirement and age-suitable housing.
Michael Lyons says plans to build new UK Towns needs “Radical Approach”
Sir Michael Lyons – chair of the Government’s New Towns Taskforce has suggested bold action is required to meet housing targets. Lyons and his Taskforce have been given 12 months to deliver a report to housing secretary Angela Rayner identifying locations for new towns and setting out the mechanism by which they can be built.
“This is about a big, bold statement of the ambition of growth and a much larger-scale response to the housing crisis” Lyons said, “We need an additional 5 million homes by 2040 and we’re not going to do that by incremental change”
The official remit asks Lyons to identify sites for new communities of “at least 10,000 homes, built on greenfield land and separated from other nearby settlements, with 40% in the ‘genuinely affordable’ social rent category”
Rental Arrears Index reveals that Local Authorities are owed £3.1M in rental arrears on average
A report from access Paysuite has revealed that Local Authorities in the UK are owed £3.1M in rental arrears on average, with a high-end estimate of £650M being owed across the entire UK.
This represents a jump of 70% in comparison to 2019 figures – where it was estimated that Local Authorities were owed £1.9M on average.
The report breaks these numbers down regionally, where it isrevealed that Local Authorities within London are owed, on average, over £10M each in rental arrears. Over double that of the next region, Yorkshire and Humber (£4.8M).
The rest of the regional break down reads as follows: North East England (£4M), West Midlands (£3.8M), Scotland (£3.5M), North West England (£2.1M), South West England (£1.9M), Wales (£1.6M), East Midlands (£1.2M), East of England (£900,000), and South East England (£750,000).