Health of housing market “worse than 20 years ago” – Barker

The health of the housing market is worse than 20 years ago, according to Dame Kate Barker, chair of the Radix Housing Commission, which has put its initial recommendations to housing minister Matthew Pennycook.

In a letter to the new housing minister, Barker, economist and author of the Barker Review of Housing Supply in 2004, commissioned by the previous Labour government, pointed out recent research from the Home Builders Federation revealing that only 11 of her 36 recommendations from 20 years ago had been implemented, “despite unusually strong support from many in the sector”.

She wrote that “sadly”, most indicators of housing market health were worse today than in 2004. “In particular, there has been a failure to link new housing with infrastructure delivery and also, since the financial crisis, a further decline in the supply of new social rent homes,” Barker stated.

Within her letter and the Commission’s initial recommendations, Barker called for the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit (NHPAU) to be reinstated to support a “more robust approach” to mandatory housing targets in the longer term. Targets should be mandated at the “strategic level” and the strategic planning process used to distribute them …