Sam and Jason, along with their five sons, have been living in temporary accommodation for a year following their eviction from their previous house. Although they have been placed in a three-bedroom house by the local council, they are one of over 1,100 families in Portsmouth waiting for a council home. Jason, a bus driver, has stated that housing in England has become unaffordable for working families like his.
To tackle England’s housing shortage, the government has set ambitious housebuilding targets for areas such as Portsmouth. The aim is for 370,000 new homes in England per year, with local authorities instructed to provide approval for developers to build with government intervention in the planning process if required. However, the analysis suggests that some regions, such as Portsmouth, will require a five-fold increase in new housing to meet the government’s targets.
The leader of Portsmouth council, Steve Pitt, has described the target of 1,021 new homes a year as “stupid and arbitrary” and believes that it will be impossible for the region to deliver the required number of new homes. The area has a limited amount of brownfield space due to its unique geography, being made up of 11 of the 14 wards on an island. Pitt believes that the government should provide sufficient funding for affordable house building to help councils such as Portsmouth to deliver on the proposed targets.
On the other hand, a spokesperson for the Ministry for Housing, Communities, and Local Government has stated that “all areas” must deliver 1.5 million homes to tackle the country’s worst housing crisis in living memory. Recently, the government announced sweeping changes to the planning system, vowing to override “blockers” that stand in the way of building new homes, but this makes little difference for families such as Sam and Jason, or Lily and Jacob, who still feel that owning their own homes is an unattainable dream
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