I miss the good old days
of George Osborne as Chancellor, with his hardhat and hi-vis jacket. He must
have visited every new home building site in the UK with his trademark attire!
For the last few years, the nearest Philip Hammond got to donning a ‘Bob the
Builder’ outfit was at his grandchild’s birthday party. However, with what
appears to be a change in focus by the Tories to ensure they get back in power
in 2022, they appear to have fallen in love with house building again with the
Chancellor’s promise to create 300,000 new households in a year.
Nationally, the number of
new homes created has topped 217,344 in the last year, the highest since the
financial crash of 2007/8. Looking closer to home: in total there were 460 ‘net
additional dwellings’ in the last 12 months in the Tunbridge Wells Borough
Council area, a decent increase of 63% on the 2010 figure.
The figures show that 64%
of this additional housing was down to new build properties. In total, there
were 293 new dwellings built over the last year in Tunbridge Wells. In
addition, there were 138 additional dwellings created from converting
commercial or office buildings into residential property and a further 30
dwellings were added as a result of converting houses into flats.
While these all added to the total
housing stock in the Tunbridge Wells area, there was 1 demolition to take into
account.
Net additional dwellings in Tunbridge
Wells in the last 12 months
|
||||
New build
|
Conversions
|
Change of use
|
Demolitions
|
Net Additions
|
293
|
30
|
138
|
-1
|
460
|
I was encouraged to see
some of the new households in the Royal Tunbridge Wells area had come from a
change of use. The planning laws were changed a few years back so that, in
certain circumstances, owners of properties didn’t need planning permission to
change office space in to residential use.
With the scarcity of building
land available locally (or the builders being very slow to build on what they
have, for fear of flooding the market), it was pleasing to see the number of
developers that had reutilised vacant office space into residential homes in
the local council area. Converting offices and shops to residential use will be
vital in helping to solve the Royal Tunbridge Wells housing crisis especially,
as you can see on the graph, that the level of building has hardly been
spectacular over the last seven years!
Now we have had the autumn
budget, Theresa May and Philip Hammond have set out their stall with housing as
their key focus. I was glad to see the Government introducing a variety of changes
to improve housing, including more funding for the supply side and an injection
of urgency into the planning system.
The biggest question is,
just where are the Government going to build all these new houses? Maybe a
topic for a future article?
Back to the main point
though and the focus on the housing market by the Tory’s is good news for all
homeowners and buy to let landlords, as it will encourage more fluidity in the
market in the longer term, sharing the wealth and benefits of homeownership for
all. However, in the short term, demand still outstrips supply for homes and
that will mean continued upward pressures on rents for tenants.
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