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Affordable Housing

I welcome this debate and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) and the Communities and Local Government Committee on their report on affordable housing. To meet the needs of my constituency, we need much more housing of all kinds. When mid-terrace former council houses on estates are selling for more than £180,000, there is indeed an interesting debate to be had about what is affordable. I note from the excellent Housing Federation booklet that my hon. Friend commended to the House that while the average house price in the south-east is 8.9 times the regional average income, in south Buckinghamshire and Oxford the ratio is more than 12 times, making it virtually impossible for many people in my area to buy a house. We certainly need housing of all kinds. I strongly endorse the Committee’s conclusion that"““the overwhelming need is for social rented housing to make up for the shortfall in supply””." There is a compelling case on social, economic and environmental grounds for substantially more such housing in central Oxfordshire and for the review of the green belt that is necessary to enable suitable sites to be identified and developed. The social case for additional housing is well documented in the strategy put forward by Oxford city council, and it is evident in every one of my advice surgeries, as I am sure that it is in those of my hon. Friends. High house prices, high rents and a shortage of social and affordable housing condemn thousands of people in our city to unacceptable living conditions. They make it very difficult for people working locally to live anywhere near their place of employment, and cause recruitment and retention problems for private and public sector employers. City council homelessness statistics show that the proportion of households in temporary accommodation is running at more than twice the national average. The need for more affordable housing is regularly raised with me by the chamber of commerce, the universities, the hospitals, other employers large and small, and the trade unions. Annual completions of affordable housing in Oxford, for rent and social ownership, have been running at about 150 a year, but a rate many times that level is needed to make real inroads into housing need. One important need that is often overlooked in the understandable focus on homelessness and temporary accommodation relates to the plight of families with children who are already in social housing, but are stuck in cramped maisonettes and flats and face a wait of years if they are ever to get a transfer to a house with a garden.