Where affordable housing is needed

This is unlikely to come as a surprise to most people, yet according to Jim Ward, residential research director at consultancy Savills, it illustrates a telling point about the housing market in England. “If you look at a map of these figures for the whole of England, then you see quite clearly those areas where affordable housing is needed most,” he says.

Kate Davies, chief executive of Notting Hill Housing Group, makes a further point. She feels that the Housing Corporation’s £1.5bn-plus annual budget should be targeted more at areas where the need for affordable housing is greatest: “The money really should be going into those areas where there is a marked difference between social housing rents and the private market.

“This is an argument in favour of London, but it is the case that the further north you go, the better the market is at providing affordable housing.”

Again, this will not surprise many people, although it is instructive the degree to which the gap between the cost of social rents and typical mortgage payments for those on the bottom rung of the housing ladder narrows the further north you look.

Another point that Ward makes is the degree of difference between urban and relatively rural areas in the two ends of the country. In Newcastle-upon-Tyne there is ample scope to find somewhere more affordable in nearby Sedgefield, than, say, in north Cornwall where the gap is actually larger than in the regional centre Bristol.

Davies also points to a proposed cut in the grant rate – by up to 20% in the case of London – by the Housing Corporation that, she claims, would drive development by NHHG out of the capital. “We want to continue providing social and affordable housing as that is what we are there to do. However, if they cut the grant rate we might have to do less social housing or more for private sale to allow us to cross-subsidise the social side of things,” she adds.