New House Building in Staines slumps by 18.8% in the Last Year 

Even with Brexit and a potential reduction in immigration numbers, there is a severe shortage of new housing being built in the Staines area (and, of course, in the UK as a whole). And even if there are short term confidence trembles fuelled by newspapers hungry for bad news, the ever growing population of Staines and the imbalance of supply/demand and the possibility of even lower interest rates will continue to underpin the Staines property market.

When the Tories were elected in 2015, Mr. Cameron vowed to build 1,000,000 new homes by 2020. If we as a country were able to hit those levels of building, most academics felt the UK housing market would balance itself as the increased supply of property would give a chance for the younger generation to buy their own homes. However, the up-to-date building figures show that in the first three months of 2016 building starts were down. Nationally, there were 35,530 house building starts in the first quarter, a long way off the 50,000 a quarter required to hit those ambitious targets.

Looking closer to home, over the last 12 months, new building in the Spelthorne Borough Council area has slumped. In 2014/15, for every one thousand existing households in the area, an additional 6.85 homes were built. For 2015/16, that figure is now only 5.56 homes built per thousand existing households. Nationally, to meet that 1,000,000 new homes target, we need to be at 7.12 new homes per thousand.

To convert those numbers into real chimney pots, over the last 12 months, in the Spelthorne Borough Council area the following properties have been built:

• 200 by Private Builders (e.g. New Homes Builders)
• 30  by Housing Associations
• None by the Local Authority

So we are still only seeing 230 new homes being built per year in the Spelthorne Borough Council area, when we need at least 295 a year just to stand still!

It seems to me that Messrs Cameron and Osborne focused their attention too much on the demand side of the housing equation, using the Help to Buy scheme and low deposit mortgages to try to convert the ‘Generation Rent’(i.e. Staines ‘20 somethings’ who are set to rent for the rest of their lives) to ‘Generation Buy’. In my view, the new Housing Minster, Gavin Barwell, needs to concentrate the Government’s efforts on the supply side of the equation. There needs to be transformations to planning laws, massive scale releases of public land and more investment, as more inventive solutions are needed.


However, ultimately, responsibility has to rest on the shoulders of Theresa May. Whilst our new PM has many plates to spin, ignoring the housing crisis will come at great cost later on. What a legacy it would be if it was Mrs. May who finally got to grips with the enduring shortage of homes in this country. The PM has already referenced the ‘need to do far more to get more houses built’ and stop the decline of home ownership. However, she has also ruled out any changes to the green belt policy – something I will talk about in a future article. Hopefully these statistics will raise alarm bells and persuade both residents and Councillors in the Spelthorne Borough Council area that housing needs to be higher on its agenda.