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TODAY'S OTHER NEWS

Fighting back - action groups launched to tackle housing crisis

Over 25 major firms have come together to combat the UK’s housing crisis by forming action groups to tackle present and future problems. The task force is led by Nationwide Building Society and it’s a mutual effort to solve the UK’s long-standing housing problems which have been exacerbated due to the pandemic.

The main issues being targeted revolve around accessibility, affordability and sustainability of homes. The four action groups hope to find ways of building more homes, encouraging more green homes and making sure more people have a place to call home whether they own or rent.

Nationwide’s Future of Home report

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Figures from Nationwide Building Society’s Future of Home report show nearly two thirds (63%) of people say the UK has a housing crisis, rising to 71% of private renters.

In response to the report’s findings, Nationwide have formed an action group to help solve the housing crisis across four core themes – New Homes, Green Homes, Rental and Delivery of Homes.

The action group members span a range of different views and positions on housing. The action group members include ARLA Propertymark, Barratt Developments, Building Societies Association, Chartered Institute of Housing, Connells Group, CPRE, the countryside charity; Energiesprong UK, E.ON, Federation of Master Builders, Homes for Good, Lord Best, Metropolitan Thames Valley, Midas Construction, Mi-Space, MoneySavingExpert.com, Nationwide Foundation, NRLA, PricedOut, Rockwool, Shelter, Switchd, Trustmark, UK Green Building Council.

Sara Bennison, chief product and marketing officer at Nationwide Building Society, comments“The pandemic served to highlight the importance of home for all of us although, as our Future of Home research showed, it also exacerbated many of the issues which have bedevilled the housing system for years."

"I have been so heartened by the generosity of time and spirit shown by all the organisations who joined us for a series of roundtables on the subject. The challenge was how can we move from rehearsing the problems of the past to coming up with practical, workable solutions in the future. By thinking about the whole system together and not just the individual components where each organisation plays, we are genuinely excited by the ideas these action groups can table for the mutual good of all.”

Aims of the four action groups

The first action group will tackle the problem of new homes and the objective is to increase the number of new homes built across all tenures. The new homes will also need to meet the requirements of first-time buyers, home movers and downsizers, and meeting high energy-efficiency standards.

The second action group will focus on building green homes and they aim to deliver 'practical solutions and policies to help people green their homes.’ These action groups aim to encourage greater public-private sector collaboration to reach net zero.

The third action group will also tackle problems in the rental sector by ‘creating a private rented sector (PRS) that works for the mutual good of landlords and renters’. Lastly, the fourth action group wants to solve the speed of delivery of new homes and want to do this ‘by removing inefficiencies in the system, building trust between parties and adopting more agile approaches.’

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