The Times, July 03, 2002

Immigrants "will double demand for new homes"

BY ANTHONY BROWNE, ENVIRONMENT EDITOR

BRITAIN will need two million extra houses if immigration continues at its current record levels, according to the Government's planning adviser. The forecast means that immigrants will nearly double the number of houses needed, far exceeding the Government's published plans.

Mortgage lenders are also giving a warning that immigration will continue to push up house prices, making them less affordable for first-time buyers.

According to figures from Dave King, director of the Population and Housing Research Group at Anglia Polytechnic University, who produces the Government's official household projections, 2.1 million houses will be needed by 2021 merely to accommodate immigrants if they continue arriving at the rate set in the past two years.

"That's a good approximation of the kind of magnitude we are talking about,"

Professor King said.

The Government is taking desperate measures to force through a huge house building programme to cope with increasing demand. Gordon Brown will announce next week plans to reduce planning controls and give extra taxpayers' money to housebuilders to boost the number of homes built. It is expected that the Government will force councils to allow houses to be built on green belt land.

Current official housing projections, published in October 1999, assume immigration of just 65,000 people a year. At that rate, immigrants would need only 740,000 houses out of a total of 3.8 million new houses needed by 2021 to cope with a naturally increasing population, ageing, and marriage breakdown.

Since then, the Government has increased its official forecast of immigration to 135,000 newcomers a year, pushing up the number of homes needed to 4.6 million, of which 1.5 million, or one third, is due to immigration.

However, the actual level of immigration has turned out to be far higher than even that forecast, totalling more than 183,000 for the past two years. At that rate 2.1 million new homes will be needed for immigrants, pushing up the total needed to 5.1 million.

One source close to the Government said:

"At that level, the figures really start looking scary. The Government doesn't like mentioning the impact of immigration because it is politically sensitive."

David Coleman, spokesman for the pressure group Immigration Watch UK, said:

"Two thirds of the increase in population is now due to immigration, so its effect on housing is not that surprising."

Recently arrived immigrants tend to live in multiple occupancy households, but when they settle down and have children, their housing needs become similar to that of the native population.

"Most international migrants end up in London, but that amount of immigration has an impact on prices, and pushes up the price gradient, making it more attractive for people to move out of London when they have kids and the floor space is cheaper. That process has always gone on, but it has been exacerbated by the large volumes of people coming to London,"

The Council of Mortgage Lenders said that immigration has become a dominant factor in pushing up house prices. 93Immigration is a major influence on household projections, and is one of the main things that have ratcheted house prices up faster than average earnings.

"It further aggravates the supply shortages of houses in the South East, and exacerbates the problems we are all aware of,"

Bob Pannell, council head of research, said. Many key workers, such as nurses and firefighters, cannot afford to live in London, and commute.

However, the Council for the Protection of Rural England said that the high level of immigration did not necessarily mean that the countryside had to be covered in new houses.

"There are vast swaths of derelict and under-used land, and we have problems in other regions with low demand.

We need more balanced regional development to mitigate the impact of immigration on a small part of the country,"

Return of Swampy

"A new generation of Swampies" will be created by the Government's proposals to steamroller infrastructure projects such as airports and motorways, according to MPs (Anthony Browne writes).

The environmental campaigner Swampy was credited with forcing a rethink after protests over such schemes as the Newbury bypass. The report by the Select Committee on Transport, Local Government and the Regions described the proposals to reform planning procedures as "unworkable" and said they undermined local democracy. The Government wants to use parliamentary powers to force schemes on local communities.