Housing and homelessness charity, Shelter, has commissioned a survey which suggested that around a third of adults in the UK do not have safe or secure homes, based on criteria including whether their accommodation had enough bedrooms, was mouldy or was structurally unsound.

According to the BBC, Shelter is calling this a “housing emergency”.

Earlier this month, Advantage wrote about the work we do with local charities supporting the homeless. As structural warranty specialists with a keen interest in property and construction, Advantage’s founders have supported charities including the Whitechapel Centre and Giving Warm through sponsorship and fundraising.

The UK government said it is spending £12bn over the next five years on affordable housing.

A shortage of affordable housing

In December, The Guardian reported that affordable housebuilding barely increased last year, rising just 1% and falling nearly 90,000 homes short of the number England is estimated to need to escape the housing crisis, according to official data.

Construction of the cheapest social housing remained at close to its lowest level since the 1980s, with just 6,566 homes built between March 2019 and April 2020.

Advantage’s view: We’ve written about the government’s target to build 300,000 homes a year more than once. And it has been suggested that simply by building more houses, this will boost affordability. However, as Nathanial Barker notes in a feature for Inside Housing, the reality may be somewhat more complex. He states: As I once heard Simon Dudley, the Conservative leader of Windsor and Maidenhead Council and then-chair of Homes England say at a conference: “You cannot build your way to affordability.”

Although this year’s increase in housebuilding output has been warmly welcomed, boosting the economy and helping to address the shortage of housing in the UK, many will feel that support and spending for social housing must be ringfenced for the social and affordable housing sector to really deliver targeted results.

Whether you’re a social and affordable housing specialist or a commercial developer or you’re planning to build or convert your dream home, Advantage can provide structural warranties for projects ranging from multi-million pound developments to individual self-builds. If you would like more information, please call: 0845 900 3969, email: sales@ahci.co.uk or pay a visit to our homepage: https://ahci.co.uk/