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Flint turns to stone

Catherine Deshayes

Housing Minister Caroline Flint has said that the Government's target of building three million new homes by 2020 is still achievable.

Following on from TheMoveChannel.com's news article of September 19^th 2008 regarding the doubt surrounding the Government being able to achieve these ambitions targets; Ms Flint has insisted that it is possible.  

Ms Flint has said that the Government will not be abandoning the target despite many industry critics saying the numbers are unrealistic and unobtainable in the wake of the current property market slump, which has seen the number of new houses being built drop dramatically.

The National Housing Federation (NHF) is one industry body who has questioned whether the targets are achievable and said that urgent measure needed to be taken to boost the housing market if the 2020 target was to be reached.

The NHF published a report last week which said that the Government target, which aims to build three million new homes by 2020, will not be reached unless Ministers intervene to help rescue the UK housing market.

The report stated that, in the current climate, the Government would only be able to build 1.6 million new homes by 2020, not the three million that they plan.

2029 was given as a time by the NHF when the original target of three million could be reached, which is almost a decade later than planned.

Whilst housing associations built 30,677 homes last year, which was around 25 per cent of the total number of homes built- the NHF felt that, with more Government support, this could reach 70,000 a year by 2011, which would boost the chances of the three million target being met.

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