Housebuilding is up – but what type of homes are being built?

Any discussion on the UK housing crisis invariably jumps straight to housebuilding: build more houses, and house prices and rents will fall, proponents claim. The recent Labour-commissioned Redfern Report argues it’s a little more complicated than that, as life tends to be. When surplus stock has increased or decreased from one year to the next, the impact on house prices is negligible.

But houses are being built: according to Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) figures, there were 189,650 dwellings completed in England in the financial year ending March 2016, up 11% on the year before.

Ask most people to think of a new home, and they’ll usually imagine a small family home. In reality, the type of new homes being built is quite diverse. Traditional new-build properties rose by 8,860 units to 163,940, but the most marked increase was in “change of use” - 30,600 new units, compared with 20,650 the year before; so not a newly built home at all. Of these, 12,824 were former offices that had been converted into flats.

This is the highest number of new dwellings since the 2008 financial crash slashed construction, but still leaves the government likely to miss its target of building a million homes by 2020.

Homes are being built, but who are the homes for, and will they do anything to mitigate the symptoms of the housing crisis?

Statistics on the supply of affordable housing paint a worrying picture: the government’s figures show that affordable housing delivery was 52% lower in 2015-16 compared with the previous year. So despite building more homes, the homes are selling at market rate, and going to people who are managing quite comfortably, rather than people struggling to buy.

The DCLG says this reflects the transition from the 2011-15 affordable housing programme to the new affordable housing programmes, arguing that delivery peaks towards the end of each tranche of housebuilding grant. But many people will be concerned about such a huge dip in the midst of a housing crisis.

If you’re struggling to buy in Britain, the growth in “affordable housing” may be good news if you can nab ones of these new builds. But if you’re renting, “affordable housing” really isn’t affordable for people in many parts of Britain - it’s set at 80% of market rent. In places where local rents are exorbitant, affordable rents are slightly less exorbitant, but still likely to be unaffordable for the lowest paid families.

And if you’re struggling even to rent, there’s little in the way of good news. The tenure of the homes being built has also shifted. The 32,110 affordable homes delivered in 2015-16 comprised 6,550 social rent, 16,550 affordable rent and 9,010 affordable home ownership, shared ownership and intermediate rent. With the introduction of affordable rent, the number of socially rented homes (at rents set by the national rent regime) being built has fallen.

In some parts of the UK, affordable rent is actually lower than social rent. But in the areas facing the acutest shortage of affordable housing, even rents of 80% market rate are too expensive for many households.

So while the number of houses being built has slightly risen, the people in need of social housing, and affordable housing, are unlikely to find much to welcome when looking closely at exactly what is being built.

Sign up for your free Guardian Housing network newsletter with news and analysis sent direct to you on the last Friday of the month. Follow us: @GuardianHousing