The British government’s ambitious plan to build two million new homes by 2016 and one million additional carbon neutral homes by 2020 may have to be revised in the light of the crisis the market is currently facing. The new houses started in the last three months of 2008 were down by 58 per cent when compared to the year before.
Falling property values and drying credit are blamed for this situation. Professionals are in agreement on this, as Gillian Charlesworth from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said: “The current financial crisis is making it almost impossible for developers to get the loan finance needed to deliver the UK’s housing needs for the future.”
Charlesworth furthermore predicts that the trend could seriously endanger the success of the Government’s building prospects, with less than one third of the 2016 target reached.
Despite this, a Department for Communities and Local Government spokesperson claimed that the targets remain unmodified. This is somewhat more than what the new housing minister Margaret Becket is willing to admit. Both Minister Becket and the British government have maintained a diplomatic silence about the issue since the start of the economic crisis.
The spokesperson however said: “We are not obsessed by targets on a day-to-day basis, we are planning for the long-term needs. At the moment the short-term priority is the economic situation and we are still planning for the long term.”
