The Government lacks the necessary ambition to solve the housing crisis and is overly reliant on a ‘broken’ market to deliver the homes people need, MPs have argued.
A Public Account Committee (PAC) report said the number of homes built in England had lagged behind demand for decades.
It warned the human costs of this crisis was illustrated by the growing problem of homelessness, with the number of families living in temporary accommodation rising from 50,000 in 2011/12 to 72,000 in 2015/16.
The report said the Department for Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG) lack of ambition on this ‘fundamental issue’ was matched only by its lack of information.
MPs said the DCLG’s lack of information was particularly noticeable when it came to the impacts and value for money of the roughly £21bn the Government spends each year on housing benefit.
And the committee said the Government’s plans to build one million new homes by the end of this Parliament would not come close to meeting the actual level of housing needed to solve the crisis.
The MPs also warned this situation would not change while the Government remained dependent on the existing ‘broken’ market, which they said was dominated by a handful of private developers.