THE GUARDIAN

Average incomes no longer enough

Kamal Ahmed, political editor
Sunday March 7, 2004
The Observer

The Government has admitted that soaring house prices have left people on average incomes, such as teachers and nurses, locked out of buying their first homes across large parts of southern England, including London and most of the South East.

A spokeswoman for the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, admitted last night that there was now an effective 'housing apartheid', with people in their own homes pulling further and further away from those yet to get on the property ladder.

With house prices rising at between 15 and 20 per cent a year, incomes, which are rising at between 5 and 10 per cent a year, cannot keep up.

'Increasing housing supply is a national priority. In large areas of the wider South East, house purchase remains out of reach for families with average household incomes,' the official said.

A new report out tomorrow will reveal the full scale of the housing crisis. The study by Cambridge University for the housing charity Shelter reveals that the Government will need to spend £3.5 billion a year to solve the housing problem.

More than 50,000 new homes are needed every year to help people on lower incomes to have their own homes. By 2014 a city the size of Leeds will need to be built.

Critics point out that, without the money, millions of people employed in the public sector will be unable to move to the South East to fill vacancies.

Without a new influx of staff, many hospitals and schools say that they will struggle to maintain standards. The Government is now expected to announce a package of measures in the Budget to try to help first-time buyers. The Treasury is considering raising the point at which people have to pay stamp duty, a tax paid on every house purchase.

The present threshold of £60,000 has remained unchanged since 1993, despite house prices increasing by 160 per cent in that time.

Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, faces being accused of maintaining the threshold as a way of raising more tax because as house prices rise more and more people are dragged into paying the surcharge. More than 75 per cent of all first-time buyers now pay the tax.

'The Government has to act,' said Adam Sampson, the director of Shelter. 'The lack of affordable housing has a destabilising effect on the economy and its cost in human terms is massive.

'Successive governments have spoken about the growing housing crisis. It has now got to the point where it cannot be ignored any longer. Housing should be given the same priority as the other key areas of public life, health and education.'

The report says that more than three-quarters of all new homes are needed in the South of England, with about 20 per cent in the North and the Midlands.

Shelter's figures on housing demand will form the basis of a Treasury review of housing to be published at the time of the Budget next week. The review, by Kate Barker, is likely to say that tens of thousands of new houses are needed and that planning restrictions should be relaxed so that housing developments can be built more easily.

She will also criticise a culture of nimbyism which has crept into many, particularly rural, towns. Many local communities block new housing even though it is desperately needed.

A study released this weekend by the Halifax revealed that first-time buyers cannot get on to the property ladder in 80 per cent of towns and cities across the country. The bank said that areas were classed as 'unaffordable' if first-time buyers needed to borrow more than 4.27 times the local average salary to buy a home.

By that calculation, 100 per cent of towns and cities in East Anglia were out of reach of first-time buyers, while 98 per cent of towns and cities in the South West were unaffordable.

The Government is set to announce large amounts of extra funding for house building in the Budget. By 2006 the amount spent will have increased by £900 million, or 25 per cent.

There will also be a £5 billion pot of money provided for affordable housing by 2006.