Tuesday 10 May
HOW TO FIX THE HOUSING CRISIS? AN EIGHT-POINT PLAN TO PERFECT THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE
By Matthew Nimmo – Director and Housing Leader at Inner Cirle Consulting and Emma Peters – Director at Inner Circle Consulting.
How to fix the housing crisis? We need significant structural changes to the way the UK plans and delivers homes. We need more funding from more sources. We need to fix the broken land market. We need densified development in towns and cities and new settlements, help for small local developers to break into the market, support for community land trusts.
It’s a checklist that can feel like a ‘wait and hope’ approach. But local authorities can take action right now within existing policy, legislation and systems. Working with councils across the UK we have come up with an eight-point plan that every council can consider. Call it the art of the possible.
One: Listen to communities – they want to talk to you – to better meet local housing need and manage demand for affordable housing. A residents survey launched by Cornwall Council to assess local people’s experience and housing need was completed by more than 2,500 people and informed a comprehensive housing crisis plan to address local issues such as second homes and invest in the right types of homes for local people. Elsewhere, Great Yarmouth cut the council housing waiting list by 95 percent and Luton Council used data to understand local issues driving homelessness and support families at risk.
Read the full article here.