Michael Gove, UK’s Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, has admitted regret over the increased number of children in temporary accommodation.
This came as the latest government figures exposed the scale of England’s housing crisis.
Figures published by the government at the end of April show nearly 112,000 households were in temporary accommodation on 31 December 2023, a 12.1% increase from the previous year. Of those, 63% included dependent children, hitting record levels in 2023.
“I can’t look at those figures with anything other than regret,” the housing secretary told a news agency.
“But there are several interlocking issues and the biggest issue overall is that whether it’s in the private rented sector, the socially-rented sector or homes to buy, we still need to increase the supply of homes now.
“I think that the Government has done a huge amount, you know, we will have built a million homes in this Parliament, but we need to do even better in the future.”
Michael Gove
Gove pointed to the increasing number of inhabitants, saying, “The number of people who come to this country, the number of families that have grown have meant that for years now we have not been building enough homes.”
The latest government homelessness figures drew scrutiny over the Conservative party’s failure to tackle housing shortages and rising prices, which critics have described as taking a “wrecking ball” to secure housing.
Last year, the government added only 234,400 new homes to England’s housing stock of a promised 300,000 additional homes.
The data, from the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities, shows 34,220 households faced the threat of homelessness, an increase of 4.8% from the same quarter the previous year. Of this figure, 5,790 households faced a section 21 notice, an increase of 10.9% from the same period the previous year.
When it was put to him that the Government has missed the Tory 2019 manifesto pledge to build 300,000 new homes a year, he said, “We’ve missed the 300,000 target, but we’ve hit the one million over the course of a Parliament target.”
“There’s an increasing pressure on housing supply … We have not been building enough homes, we have not been creating the new housing that matches the new formation of households.”
Michael Gove
Housing Reform Bill To Be Passed Within Months
Gove, who was unable to give an exact timetable, stated that the Conservative government’s long-promised legislation to scrap section 21 notices, which allow landlords to end tenancies at will with just two months’ notice, is expected to come within “a matter of months.”
The Housing Secretary’s housing reform bill, now in its second reading in the House of Lords, is expected to become law.
Gove averred, “I hope that the Bill that will ensure that we no longer have section 21 will receive Royal Assent, in other words, will be done and dusted by the summer.”
“Then it will be, I hope, a matter of months after that that we will end section 21 for new tenants, and then shortly after that we will be in a position to end section 21 altogether,” he added.
He noted that the legislation will have been passed by the time of the next general election, expected this autumn, and “the end of section 21 for new tenants and the election should be within weeks of one another.”
He said the review of the courts, which applies to existing tenants, should come “as quickly as possible after the end for new tenants.”
To solve the housing crisis, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has set a target of 1.5m new homes over five years and said that the party would strengthen guidance to ensure developers included sufficient affordable housing.
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