The housing minister Caroline Flint has rejected the suggestion that the government’s targets for high density building in cities are responsible for the current over-supply.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4 on Thursday morning’s breakfast show, the minister who was recently snapped going into parliament for a consultation on the housing situation with the words “we can’t tell how bad it will get”, jotted on her notepad, said that more homes were still needed and that a great deal of consultation went in to the building of new flats.
When asked whether she thought government targets for in high density building in cities had encouraged the over-supply that we now have, the minister replied: “I don’t think that’s the case. We still need to build more homes and in some places those flats were necessary for first time buyers, and they were necessary for the markets in those areas.
“The fact is that we still need to build more homes, we’re not prescriptive about those homes and we need to build a range of homes. That’s what we said to local authorities who first and foremost are in a position to determine what their local housing needs are.
“We have made sure through our planning and guidance that local authorities understand that that’s part of their responsibility to do that. We need more family homes and that’s exactly what our guidance has said.”
The question-dodging politician also admitted that meeting the government target of three million new homes by 2020 would be a “challenge”.
Ms Flint’s comments come in the same week as a number of leading house builders announced jobs cuts, including 1,200 at Persimmon, the same number at Barratt Homes and 900 at Taylor Wimpey. Bovis Homes also announced that it will be laying off 40 per cent of its workforce.
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