Why we can address Vince Cable’s warning about UK housing shortage
The UK’s Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Vince Cable, has warned that the country will need to more than double the new homes that it builds annually to 300,000 if it is to avert dangerous rises in house price inflation. This warning is the most serious yet among the many warnings that Cable has made about house price inflation in the UK and suggests that speedy and firm action is required to tackle the problem. However, as we will make clearer, we at STREIF can assist in tackling the UK’s housing dilemma with our residential building services.
“There is an enormous gap between what’s needed … and what we’re currently getting”
The UK government has already made reforms to planning laws, but these reforms have done little to address the problem of a lack of supply of new homes. Cable recently said to ITV News: “There is an enormous gap between what’s needed, which is probably 300,000 houses a year as my party is advocating, and what we’re currently getting, which is 125,000 to 130,000.” He has noted that some of the new homes that the country needs will have to be built – for example, through the building of cities like garden cities – on green belt land.
Cable described the shortfall in new housing as “worrying for many families, particularly low income and middle income families who can no longer get into the housing market” and noted that this problem was being experienced even by “quite prosperous families”. He added that this shortfall “means that people who can get mortgages are piling up private debt” and this trend is “potentially creating financial instability, as the governor [of the Bank of England] has warned”.
We can construct homes of many different types
STREIF has long made a name for itself in building a great number and diversity of comfortable and environmentally friendly German homes. It has also used its expertise for the construction of many new homes in the UK. In fact, residential construction has been our core market since we commenced large scale off site construction in 1964.
We can build homes of many types, including detached, semi-detached, single-storey, multi-storey, apartment, terraced and timber homes. And, of course, not all of these categories of homes are mutually exclusive. Above are just some reasons why our residential building services could greatly help in relieving the UK’s big housing shortage.