Who has really delivered on housing over the past 20 years

Who has really delivered on housing over the past 20 years

 the industry prepares for yet another housing minister this year, research has been completed to find out who can legitimately claim the best track record.

11th July 2019 0 287 Views

There’s no denying that the position of Housing Minister within the UK Government is a challenging one, as the constant revolving door of 17 in 20 years proves, but who has really delivered against their promises?

Benham and Reeves, one of London’s largest independent letting and sales agents, with 17 branches in prime locations and five international offices, has reviewed the performance of housing ministers during their time in post and discovered that Labour’s time in office wasn’t the housing disaster that the Conservatives like to claim.

HOUSE BUILDERS?

• Yvette Cooper (Lab): the best housing minister since 1997 with an average of 17,984 homes built per month.
• Mark Prisk (Con): worst with just 11,089 built on average per month.
• Margaret Beckett (Lab): one of the least good when it comes to private homes but for housing association and local authority dwellings, she performed the best, with 3,079 built per month.
• Keith Hill (Lab) ranks second with 16,619 dwellings completed per month between June 2003 and May 2005.
• Alok Sharma (Con) also saw the average number of dwellings completed per month top 16,000 during his time as housing minister.
• Mark Prisk, Grant Schapps, Kris Hopkins (all Con) and Jon Healey (Lab) rank as the worst performing housing ministers, with the level of homes built falling below an average of 13,000 per month.

“It’s no secret that the Government has been pretty abysmal when it comes to delivering enough homes to meet the demand of the nation’s aspirational homeowners,” says Anita Mehra, MD of Benham & Reeves (left).

“While we’ve been failing to build enough homes, the population has been swelling, house prices have been increasing and wages have failed to keep pace.

“Until we address the issue of supply and allow the housing minister to operate as a Secretary of State in order to actually do something meaningful, we will continue to see an inadequate number of homes delivered by the Government.”