For almost a decade, the government has been selling off public land; hospitals, prisons and ministry of defence land. The current five-year programme has the dual aim of releasing enough land for 160,000 homes by 2020, and raising £5 billion in capital receipts.
Ostensibly, the aim of the programme was to help solve the housing crisis. But the government has shown scant interest in the types of homes being built. Solving the housing crisis requires building millions of new homes, but the crux of the crisis is in the affordability of the homes.
Research by the New Economics Foundation, a left leaning think tank, found that:
• While the government has sold enough public land for developers to build 131,000 homes, only 2.6% of those homes will be for social rent.
• 15% of homes built on public land will be classified as ‘affordable housing’, which is a highly elastic term, including shared ownership schemes, which are accessible to those earning £80,000 a year in London.
So even under the most generous interpretation, less than one new home in five that is built on public land will be “affordable”
See link to report here:
https://neweconomics.org/2020/02/sold-off-public-land-is-creating-minuscule-amounts-of-affordable-housing
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