In the decade to 2021, population grew faster than or at the same rate as the number of homes in 150 out of 309 local authorities, according to our analysis of data from the recently published 2021 Census and the Department for Regeneration, Housing and Communities .
Housing experts say we are not building enough, even where the number of new properties is keeping pace with population growth, because there were already too few houses.
The number of homes in England has increased by 8.4% over the past decade, while the population has increased by 6.6%. But that’s an average, and averages hide differences between places.
The purple shading on this map it shows areas where population has grown faster than or at the same rate as residential real estate. This affects almost half of the regions and suggests that supply is not meeting demand.
The most pronounced shortages are in London and the surrounding local authorities, such as e.g Barking and Dagenham and garden ring.
Barking and Dagenham experienced the third highest population growth, which put significant pressure on housing supply.
“There is a £20m shortfall in funding from central government and as a result we cannot get enough houses built because we don’t have the necessary infrastructure. Despite this, we are still the biggest builder in London.”
Clr Darren Rodwell, leader of Barking and Dagenham Council
Population is growing faster than wealth in the suburbs of other major cities such as Manchester and Birmingham.
A council spokesman for Sandwell, an area just outside Birmingham, says it has the fastest growing population in the Black Country.
“This increases the need as well as the challenges associated with the high cost of remediation and decontamination of industrial sites on open land prior to residential development.”
It has identified sites for 4,338 new homes over the next five years.
Now look at it yellow shading. This shows places where Housing has grown faster than population between 2011 and 2021.
Most of these are rural areas, especially in the north of England. Richmondshire’s population has fallen by around 5% between 2011 and 2021, while the number of dwellings has increased by 6.8%.
And in nearby Hambleton, the number of dwellings increased by 9.5% while the population grew by 1.8%.
Growing up in London, we can see that building has outstripped population growth in certain boroughs such as Hammersmith and Fulham, Camden and Kensington and Chelsea.
But the percentage of empty houses is low and not only in these areas. This is a trend across England and is another sign of a stressed housing market.
When there are not enough vacant properties, prices are higher and rental conditions are often worse.
Valentine Quinio, senior analyst at the Center for Cities, says we need empty homes to enable the housing market to function properly.
“With very few vacant homes, landlords have the bargaining power to raise rents because they know tenants have no choice,” he says.
In England, only 1% of homes are vacant, which is much lower than most European countries.
In Germany, the latest OECD figures show that 8.2% of all dwellings are vacant, while in Japan it is 13.6%.
The long-term vacancy rate in England has not changed much since 2011 and is below 3% in every local authority.
Quinio says the lack of vacant properties means more people have to live in home shares.
Our analysis also shows that households are growing in size in the same places where not enough houses were built over the past decade.
“Homelessness was a big problem in many cities already, and these are the same cities that are struggling now,” says Quinio.
The lack of supply also means that the average quality of housing is lower, as new builds tend to be better insulated.
On average, more than eight in 10 new homes created in England in 2021 were new-build homes.
However, new builds made up less than half of new homes in eight of the 309 areas we analysed, including Portsmouth, Richmondshire and Eastbourne.
What does this mean for house prices?
Prices have risen everywhere in a decade, but the rise was more than 50% in two-thirds of England’s local authorities.
The cost of buying a property has doubled in some London boroughs such as Waltham Forest, Barking and Dagenham, Hackney and Lewisham.
Our analysis shows that prices have risen more in areas where the population has grown faster than the number of homes and in areas where the vacancy rate is lower.
Tom Bill, head of UK housing research at property consultancy Knight Frank, says there are often local housing shortages because “it’s not a perfect system” and property isn’t always built where it’s needed most.
“Builders face red tape, they face uncertainty about government support initiatives like Help to Buy,” he says.
“It’s often not as simple as going in and plugging a hole in the supply.”
A dysfunctional housing market has a negative impact on population growth and economic growth in cities.
Quinio says that, apart from London, the big cities have average population growth – a sign that they are “punching below their weight” when it comes to house building.
“They should be above average because they should be driving economic growth,” he says. “[A shortage of housing] it actually delays the creation of a household.”
A spokesman for the Department for Uplift, Housing and Communities said: “Comparing population growth with new homes built does not take into account those living together.
“A more meaningful analysis is to compare the number of households – between 2011-21 there were 1.9 million extra homes in England, while the number of households increased by 1.37 million
“We remain committed to our target of delivering 300,000 homes a year and just before the pandemic hit, housebuilding reached its highest level in 30 years – with over 242,000 new homes.
“We are investing £11.5 billion to deliver up to 180,000 affordable homes across the country, alongside a £1.8 billion investment to support land regeneration, providing more local housing, transport and better infrastructure for local communities”.
Methodology
Local authorities are based on the 2021 boundaries. For authorities whose boundaries changed between 2011 and 2021, we tracked and matched the previous boundaries. The areas affected are: Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, Dorset, Buckinghamshire, West Suffolk, East Suffolk, Somerset and Taunton, West Northamptonshire and North Northamptonshire.
An area is considered to have an unhealthy housing market when the difference between population growth and the increase in the number of homes in stock is greater than -2 percentage points. Years refer to financial years.
Vacancy rates only refer to long-term vacant properties, which include homes that have been vacant for six months or more. This does not include homes listed as second homes.
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