Slump in Northampton New Builds

Hello and thank you for watching, today I’m going to be talking about the shortage of new homes being built in Northampton and the UK as a whole.

Back in 2015, the Tories vowed to build One million new homes by the year twenty twenty, which works out to be 50,000 new homes per quarter, and I wanted to see how this was going. So looking at the up-to-date building figures it shows that in the first three months of 2016 building starts were down.  Nationally, there were just over thirty five thousand house building starts in the first quarter, which is a long way off the 50,000 target!

But what’s been happening here in Northampton with the new builds? Well looking at the figures over the last 12 months new building in our area has slumped. 

In 2014/15, for every one thousand existing households, 7 new homes were built but for last year so 2015/16, that figure is down to just 5 for every thousand! But what does that actually mean in terms of the number of chimney pots….. Well over the last 12 months we have seen just 490 new homes built, 360 built by private and new home builders and 130 by housing associations.

Now these numbers are simply not enough to house the growing population of Northampton and I think more new homes are needed! 

I know some of you watching this will be thinking, where are these new build homes going to be built because we have no space! Or do we?

Let me tell you this fascinating piece of information I found out recently, well I found it fascinating – I hope you do too!

Looking specifically at England, the 20 million homes cover only 1.1% of its land mass. 

And looking in more detail gardens cover 4.3%, shops and Offices just 0.7%, Highways so the our Roads and Paths is 2.3%, Railways is 0.1%, Rivers and Reservoirs 2.6% and Industry, Military and other uses is 1.4%.

This leaves 88.5% of the land mass as Open Countryside, so as a country, we have plenty of space to build more homes for the younger generations!

Of course I am not suggesting building massive housing estates and 20 storey apartment blocks next to local beauty spots, but I do think there is room to build and house the ever growing population!