Based on newly revised migration figures, England has under-built by 1.34 million homes in the past decade, according to the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) think tank.
The CPS published an analysis on Monday suggesting half a million more homes were needed in 2022, around 73 percent higher than the government’s 300,000-a-year housing target, which has never been met.
The think tank called on the government to get net migration down to manageable levels while “significantly” speeding up housebuilding.
The net migration figures are lower when looking at years ending in June—607,000 in the year ending June 2022 and 672,000 in the year ending June 2023—but the CPS said these figures “could well be revised upwards in due course.”
Combined with net migration of 467,000 in 2021, the UK’s population has grown by the equivalent of a Birmingham-sized city in the past two years, the report said, adding that the growth doesn’t appear to be one-off.
“The Home Office is continuing to issue record numbers of immigration visas—1.08 million in the first nine months of 2023, up by 3 percent on the same period last year. Even if Ukrainian refugees and Hong Kong BN(O) visas are stripped out of the figures, the numbers are up by 26 percent, so the underlying drivers of immigration still appear to be strengthening,” the CPS said.
The increased proportion of non-EU immigrants also means new immigrants are more likely to stay longer, the CPS cited the ONS and the Office for Budget Responsibility as saying.
Meanwhile, the government’s housing target, 300,000 new homes a year, was calculated based on, among other factors, the assumption that net migration would be around 170,500 per year. That’s less than a quarter of the actual figure last year.
As 90 percent of immigrants move to England rather than other parts of the UK, around 515,000 new homes were needed in England last year and in each coming years, according to the CPS’s calculation. That’s 73 percent higher than the official target.
However, “there were only around 177,810 dwelling completions in England in 2022, barely 35 [percent] of what we needed to match estimated growth in housing need,” the report says.
“As a result of record net migration and sluggish housebuilding over the last decade, we have under-built by around 1.34 million homes,” the CPS said in a statement.
According to the analysis, net migration in effect accounts for 89 percent of the deficit, which is “intensely concentrated” in London and southeast England.
The migration-driven housing shortage also disproportionately affects the rental market as the vast majority of immigrants live in rental homes.
Based on a previous ONS study that found 88 percent of EU immigrants and 80 percent of non-EU immigrants were renting, the CPS estimates around 450,000 people entered the rental market in England in 2022, “assuming almost all Ukrainians remained with their host families.”
Author Karl Williams, deputy research director at the CPS, said: “These figures highlight the historic rise in net migration and the failure of successive governments in tackling the housing crisis. Not only are we not building enough homes to meet demand from people already living in the UK, we are not even properly taking into account the needs of new arrivals.
“The government needs to get a grip on the immigration system to deliver the control it promised at the last election and do more to encourage housebuilding—greenfield and brownfield, urban and rural, north and south—otherwise a growing portion of the population will find themselves locked out of home ownership by our cavernous housing deficit,” he added.
In the report, Mr. Williams welcomed the government’s previous announcement to clamp down on student dependents, which is due to take effect in January, and recommended future actions such as clamping down on low-quality university degrees, tackling the abuse of visa rules, reforming salary thresholds for migrant workers and the shortage occupation list, and capping the number of immigrants from 2025.
“But whether or not it does any of these, it also needs to build many more homes,” the report said.
