Examination of Witnesses (Questions
355-359)
MS INES
NEWMAN, MS
JANET SILLETT,
MR ADAM
SAMPSON AND
MR PATRICK
SOUTH
12 DECEMBER 2005
Q355 Chair: Can you say who you are and
who you are representing?
Mr Sampson: Adam Sampson. I am
the director of Shelter.
Mr South: Patrick South. I am
the interim director of policy at Shelter.
Ms Sillett: I am Janet Sillett.
I am a policy officer at the Local Government Information Unit.
Ms Newman: I am Ines Newman. I
am head of policy at the Local Government Information Unit.
Q356 Mr Betts: Would it be fair to characterise
what you both say to us in this way: the government is broadly
right in saying there should be an increase in house building
in this country to meet need, but you think the government has
overstated the need for housing for home purchase and understated
the need for social housing for rent?
Mr Sampson: That sums it up reasonably
well. It is important to say that there is nothing intrinsically
wrong with home ownership. We are not opposed to home ownership.
It is a perfectly decent tenure and it is perfectly decent for
government to wish to encourage people to realise their aspirations.
Our position is that at this point in the housing crisis that
engulfs this country it is possibly the wrong emphasis to be placing
on home ownership and greater emphasis needs to be placed on social
renting in particular.
Ms Newman: We agree.
Q357 Mr Betts: There is an argument which
says we have sufficient houses in this country; it is just that
people are in the wrong places. If we had a different policy of
trying to move people to where the houses are, there would not
be this need for this massive house building programme in the
south east.
Mr Sampson: People are rather
irritating. They want to live where they can get jobs, access
to decent schools and infrastructure. It is very difficult. We
have been trying to regenerate areas of the country in order to
provide people with what they aspire to in terms of life chances
for decades now without conspicuous success. In the meantime,
the south east of the country remains the economic engine of the
country. That is where the jobs are; that is where people want
to be. Sadly, people vote with their feet. While there are a large
number of empty homes in this country—something like 700,000—that
figure hides the fact that at least half of those homes are only
empty for a very short period of time and, of the remainder, a
significant proportion are in areas of the country where there
is massive oversupply of housing. While trying to move people
to where the empty homes are may help a little, it will not be
sufficient to solve the crisis in any way at all.
Q358 Martin Horwood: Do you not think
there is a risk though in this free market approach that always
drives people to where the housing demand currently is, because
that can create housing hot spots where, just like building more
roads and having more people driving on them, you inflate prices?
Ms Newman: Both your question
and that from Clive Betts point to a lack of coordination between
regional policy and housing policy. That is fairly fundamental.
We would definitely like to see greater emphasis on economic development
in the north. However much we welcome the idea of the Olympics
in London, it is probably a big mistake in terms of where infrastructure
is going and where investment is going to take place. It is probably
going to be done at the cost of some development and infrastructure
investment up in the north. We will be lucky to see it all happen
but if you are going to try to get people to live in the north
you have to put the infrastructure and the economic jobs up there.
Q359 Martin Horwood: One of the things
that has become clear in the evidence we have heard already is
that this simple north/south divide is not very meaningful. There
are areas of low demand, including I suspect Newham, and areas
of high demand in the north so it is about subregional markets
as much as anything else, but in general you are concerned about
this idea of housing hot spots?
Mr Sampson: Absolutely. We are
very supportive of the principle of housing market renewable areas
in areas of the north. It is not that one is against the notion
of trying to stimulate economic activity in other areas of the
country where there is housing. We know there is a huge shift
towards areas of economic activity. The truth of the matter is
that we have been building insufficient numbers of houses to deal
with household formation generally across the piece. We have been
building roughly 150,000 houses a year. The numbers on household
projections are around 190,000 a year. Regardless of the economic
distribution of houses, nevertheless there is an underlying mismatch
in terms of supply and need.
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