Government to tackle housing shortage

New powers to fund house-building have been announced, as ministers promised more measures in next week's Budget.  Housing associations will be reclassified as private bodies allowing their £70bn debt to be removed from the government's balance sheet.  They said the technical change would allow them to build more affordable homes.  But Labour said the government had no coherent plan to address the "housing crisis".

Latest figures show 217,350 "additional dwellings" in England last year, which includes new builds, conversions and changes of use. This was up by 27,700 up on 2015-16.  Labour said any increase was welcome but that house-building had still not returned to the level it reached before the global financial crisis.  Visiting a north London housing estate, Prime Minister Theresa May pledged to take "personal charge" of the government's strategy to address what is widely regarded as the chronic shortage of new affordable homes being built, particularly for rent.  There have been reports of tensions within the cabinet about whether the government should be borrowing tens of billions to directly fund more schemes.

In a speech in Bristol, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said the decision by the Office for National Statistics to remove housing association debt from the UK balance sheet would help create a more "stable investment environment" for the thousands of providers.

Housing associations were classified as public bodies in 2015 because of the way they were funded - a move that led to warnings it would hamper their ability to fund new house-building.