Nickell Says U.K. Building Crash Has Intensified Need for Homes
Former Bank of England policy maker Stephen Nickell said Britain needs to build more houses than he estimated last year because the recession has hit construction.
At least 237,800 extra homes are required each year until 2031, the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit, of which Nickell is chairman, said in a report published in London today. That’s 3 percent more than the group said would be needed in June 2008.
The deepest economic contraction in at least a generation has exacerbated a housing-market crash after prices tripled in the decade to 2007. Homebuilders such as Barratt Developments Plc and Redrow Plc last year had to dump unsold homes at knock- down prices and halted almost all new developments business card design.
“The recession will have little impact on the number of homes that we need to build over the next 30 years,” Nickell said in a statement. “There are also likely to be increasingly serious wider economic and social consequences if we do not manage to bring the supply and demand for housing back towards balance and start tackling the backlog of unmet demand.”
Nickell’s housing unit, which advises the government, makes its estimates based on affordability and the number of new households it expects will be created.