A landmark review of the housing crisis in Britain backed by Labour and led by the boss of one of the country’s biggest housebuilders has been criticised for downplaying the lack of homes being constructed by property companies.

The housing charity Shelter said a “drastic shortage” of affordable homes was the biggest factor behind a slump in home ownership, while Aldermore, the mortgage lender, accused the Redfern review of bypassing the issue of supply.

The government wants 200,000 new homes to be built each year in England, but this target has not been met for years. Just 139,030 were completed in the year to June 2016, according to the Office for National Statistics.

However, the review, led by Pete Redfern, chief executive of housebuilder Taylor Wimpey, claimed the biggest drivers behind the decline in home ownership since the financial crisis were a fall in real incomes for potential first-time buyers, and banks tightening their mortgage lending. The review claimed that increasing housing supply “does not directly improve the home ownership rate” and will not solve the crisis.

In response, Campbell Robb, Shelter’s chief executive, said: “We should be under no illusion that the biggest factor driving our housing crisis is the drastic shortage of affordable homes. The government is, sadly, set to miss its million homes target for 2020, but if implemented quickly there are reforms that can plug the gap and finally build the homes all those struggling to keep up with sky-high housing costs are crying out for.

“With the autumn statement and a homebuilding white paper approaching, we hope the new government will seize the opportunity to make serious commitments to homebuilding and resolve this historic crisis.”

Charles Haresnape, managing director for mortgages at Aldermore, added: “To diminish the role that decades of housing undersupply has had on prices and a market where our own research has found that almost a quarter of respondents were not planning to ever own a house is to bypass the major issue most see in the industry.

“Yesterday’s CML [Council of Mortgage Lenders] data showed that mortgage affordability is at a historic low for those lucky enough to make it on to the property ladder. But competition for affordable properties means that many lose out.”



The shadow housing minister, John Healey, who commissioned the review, said it was an “unprecedented analysis” of the housing market – including expert submissions from a wide range of relevant organisations. It found that home ownership in England had fallen from 70.9% in 2003 to 63.6% today, with a dramatic drop from 58.6% to 36.7% among those aged between 25 and 34.



Asked whether housebuilders had a duty to solve the housing crisis, Redfern said they had a “reasonable duty not to be part of the problem” and that property developers had an interest in growing home ownership because it boosted sales.

But he warned against simply building more homes for first-time buyers, saying it was important to keep a “broad base” of supply, pointing to the collapse in the price of city centre apartments during the financial crisis after a rush of development before 2008. “You end up with the wrong product in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.



The thinktank ResPublica will on Thursday call for the government to solve the housing crisis by launching a national housing fund, which will be backed with £100bn over 10 years and build up to 75,000 homes a year.