Crisis warning on social housing

Demand for social housing has risen as supply has fallen

A group of MPs has warned of a crisis in the supply of social housing in Northern Ireland if urgent steps are not taken to meet rising demand.

A report by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee said that the number of people waiting for social housing had increased significantly to 27,000.

The committee said that about half of these cases were considered urgent.

It was concerned by confusion between departments and called for a co-ordinated regional housing strategy.

Overall impact

According to the report, there are now more than 16,000 homeless households in Northern Ireland.

The committee was especially critical of a decision to reduce the target for new-build housing by more than 400 because of a lack of funds.

However, it said that £37m was being raised annually from record sales of Housing Executive stock, which was being returned to the treasury.

The report said that there were promising initiatives under way in Northern Ireland, but they were being pursued in isolation.

In addition, responsibility for housing issues ranges across at least four departments which makes co-ordination across government difficult.

The committee concluded that much more needs to be done to co-ordinate policies and to assess the overall impact of the house sales scheme and co-ownership scheme if a social housing crisis is to be avoided.

What is needed is a much more focused and co-ordinated government delivery system for social housing Tony Clarke MP

The report, by a sub-committee set up to look at the problem, revealed that targets for building new social housing were being missed every year.

On Monday, committee chairman Michael Mates MP said the report had found a large deficit in the numbers of social housing.

He said: "What we uncovered was a very serious situation of rising demand for social housing against a dramatic fall in the number of houses available.

"Since 1979, 114,000 houses have been disposed of and this exceeds the remaining Northern Ireland Housing Executive stock of 103,000," he said.

"We call on the government to grip this problem with urgency and we set out some concrete proposals to deal with this situation before this potential crisis becomes reality."

Tony Clarke MP, chairman of the sub-committee, said: "What is needed is a much more focused and co-ordinated government delivery system for social housing."