We need more affordable housing – but proposed changes won’t deliver

If we’re serious about building affordable homes and helping first-time buyers, just building more houses won’t do it. Instead, new housing should be well-designed, higher density, and use the minimum amount of land.

The Government’s revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) sees mandatory housing targets re-introduced with changes to the standard method for calculating them. Under the new method, Oxfordshire would see targets for the number of new homes increase by 60% across the county, with numbers for South Oxfordshire doubling. But the evidence shows us that building more houses won’t bring prices down.

In the last decade, Oxfordshire has built many more houses than ONS (Office of National Statistics) analysis suggests, yet prices continue to rise. Instead of providing lower cost housing and starter homes for local people, the new builds are more likely to provide executive houses for commuters, adding pressure to services and infrastructure that are already creaking.

Under the proposed changes, areas that have seen large housing growth, such as Oxfordshire, are further penalised by greater numbers being made on this existing high base. This approach is entirely at odds with seeking to address inequality across the nation and the need to increase economic activity (and therefore homes needed) in less prosperous areas.

50% of housing cost is land cost, so to build genuinely affordable homes, identifying what sort of houses we need and where we need them should be a priority. Our focus should be on high density housing, which doesn’t need to mean overcrowded estates and high-rise apartments. Well-designed, well-built, energy-efficient developments help to create self-sufficient communities – not only bringing down costs for residents but also reducing demand on the grid – in areas where there is already the infrastructure to support them. The current Oxfordshire average is 35 dwellings per hectare. We believe we should aim for between 70-100 dwellings per hectare.

Taking this approach would have the benefit of addressing the three major issues we currently face: housing, cost-of-living and the climate crisis. While we applaud the Government’s ambitions to build more affordable homes, we have serious doubts that their proposed methods will either achieve their aims or protect the systems that support us.