UK housing conditions among worst in Western Europe, report claims

8 September 2011

An alarming new report produced by the Pro Housing Alliance, a recently formed lobby group made up of leading housing experts, claims that housing conditions in the UK are among the worst in Western Europe and cost the country £7 billion in costs to the NHS, social services and education.

The alliance claims a lack of affordable decent accommodation, cuts to local authority housing services and short sighted welfare reforms are combining to create real hardship, misery and ill-health for some of the most vulnerable people in the country.

In its report called Recommendations for the Reform of UK Housing Policy and its supplement Housing Crisis on London, the alliance sets out 11 key recommendations designed to address the growing problems with housing in this country.

Key recommendations include a call to provide 500,000 green and affordable homes per year for the next seven years (including the use of empty dwellings), a reform of land supply and land taxation to help fund regeneration and affordable housing initiatives, re-defining the term "affordable" and rescinding recent changes to housing benefit.

The situation according to Professor Peter Ambrose , one of the report's authors, is particularly bleak in London where overcrowding, increasing homelessness and rising rents are exacerbating social inequalities and growing the divide between 'haves' and 'have nots'. The report argues that the capital needs to build more affordable housing urgently. Clearly, not enough homes are being built to meet demand and what is built is not actually very 'affordable'.

Dr Stephen Battersby, President of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, said:

"The lack of a coherent housing policy for the past thirty years has created an expensive housing market with a shortage of affordable housing, too many people are paying too much for their accommodation relative to incomes, too many properties pose a risk to health and safety and the cost to the NHS of treating housing related illness is way too high. Housing is fundamental to public health and well-being and the government needs a completely new way of thinking about housing.

"Housing has been one of the biggest casualties of the government's massive cutbacks to public expenditure with some of the most vulnerable members of society paying the heaviest price for a financial crisis brought on by the banking community."

"I fear that we are also moving to a situation where unscrupulous landlords proliferate as better landlords move up-market. Councils will not be in a position to control and regulate this effectively. This is not a problem that is going to disappear conveniently."

The report will be launched at the headquarters of the Chartered institute of Environmental Health in London on 9 September.

For media enquiries, please contact Andrew Hamadanian on 0207 827 5922 or 07944 262 100

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