The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), a conservative think tank, says 382,000 homes a year will need to be built, partly in order to keep up with the demographic bubble caused by a surge in net migration.
Housing and immigration are both set to be key issues at the next general election, which is expected to take place later this year.
The latest projections by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) predict net migration will add 6.1 million people to Britain’s population by 2036.
Responding to the ONS figures on X, formerly known as Twitter, the ex-home secretary, Suella Braverman, wrote: “I campaigned for Brexit to reduce migration. These numbers are too high, placing pressure on schools, the NHS & housing.”
“Recent government measures will help a bit but they’re very late. We need a cap on overall numbers so we can hold government to account & fix this problem,” she added.
‘We Have Failed to Build Enough Homes’
He said, “For decades, we have failed to build enough new homes to meet demand from those already living in the UK and record net migration has only exacerbated the problem.”“The government needs to deliver on its promise to bring migration down and do more to tackle the country’s cavernous housing deficit by facilitating housebuilding right across the country, greenfield and brownfield, urban and rural, north and south,” added Mr. Williams.
The think tank said that meant 382,000 homes a year would need to be constructed between 2021 and 2036, which is well above the government’s original target of 300,000, which has since been shelved because of pressure from Tory backbenchers who opposed building on green belt land.
It is also 60 percent higher than the current rate of 240,000, in 2022/2023.
The CPS said this shortfall was on top of the deficit from, “decades of under-building” by both Labour and Conservative governments.
The ONS said Britain’s population was estimated to grow by 6.6 million by 2036 and they said net migration accounts for the lion’s share of the increase, with only 541,000 caused by births outnumbering deaths.
Starmer Promises ‘Shovels in the Ground’
He said, “We'll get shovels in the ground, cranes in the sky, and build the next generation of Labour new towns.”Housebuilding in Britain boomed between 1945-1975 and a number of new towns, such as Milton Keynes, East Kilbride, Stevenage, Washington and Cumbernauld, were built with mostly social housing estates.
But there was a big decline in housebuilding in the 1980s and 1990s and Sir Tony Blair’s Labour government concentrated on education and the NHS, rather than building new homes.
He said the debate over legal immigration—never mind illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel and the controversial Rwanda policy—had obscured the issues of fertility.
Mr. Morland told The Epoch Times, “It shows the pressures from business, which shows the fact that there are not enough people coming into the workforce who are British-born, which is why we need all the immigrants, and it shows that the government’s endless rhetoric about cutting immigration after 13 years in power is just rhetoric.”
