The type of housing built matters, not just the quantity
All political parties agree that more housing needs to be built to address the housing crisis. But what they don’t often talk about is the type of housing the UK needs, rather than just the quantity.
Take Kemi Badenoch, the conservative shadow housing secretary. She said in a BBC article that primary schools in Hackney, London are closing because not enough housing is being built.
But as someone who lives in Hackney, I can see new housing being built from my window. In fact, there have been nearly 13,000 new properties built in Hackney over the last 10 years, allowing the population to grow by 5% (Census data). So if there’s more housing and the population has grown, why are primary schools still closing?
Why are primary schools closing in Hackney?
4 primary schools are closing in Hackney in September 2024, because the number of children under 10 in Hackney has fallen dramatically by over 9% in 10 years (Census data).
But the number of children isn’t falling everywhere. Across England & Wales, the number of children under 10 actually increased by 1.4% over 10 years (Census data). And in some places, the number of children has increased much more than that. In Havering, the number of children under 10 has increased by 24%, so much so that next year Havering has been allocated nearly 60% of London’s budget for basic capital needs to help it build new schools (see BBC article).
You might assume that Hackney must have a much lower birth rate than other regions for this to make sense. But in fact, Hackney has one of the highest birth rates in the country, with 13.3 births per thousand people, compared with an average of 9.0 for England & Wales (ONS data).
What’s happening is that lots of babies are being born, but young families are then moving out of Hackney to other parts of the UK. During the single year of 2022, 4.5% of the population of under 10s in Hackney moved away (ONS data). The same trend is happening across the UK, with families leaving cities en masse and moving into suburban hotspots. This is causing headaches for public services, particularly for schools.
Internal migration of children under 15 within the UK
Why are families leaving Hackney?
Families are moving out of Hackney because they can’t find the right type of housing in Hackney that is also affordable.
Families need space, and Hackney doesn’t have big enough properties for families to live in. A lot of families require a 3 bedroom property to avoid overcrowding. But only 35.1% of Hackney’s properties have 3 or more bedrooms, making Hackney the 8th worst place in the country for properties big enough for families (Census data).
Families also look for outdoor space for children to play in, which often means they look for houses with gardens instead of flats. Despite new houses being built, the total number of houses in Hackney has decreased by 1,000 over 10 years, as existing houses are turned into flats or demolished (Census data).
This decrease in supply of suitable housing for families has led to crazy price increases. The price of a 3 bed house in Hackney has increased more than anywhere else in the country over the last 30 years (source: Fairy Godmover data derived from land registry & Gov.uk data), with average prices sat at nearly £1 million. Families often look for stability in their children’s education and in their housing costs by buying a property, but buying in Hackney for families is becoming increasingly unaffordable.
House price in Hackney over time by number of bedrooms
Renting in Hackney is also becoming far harder to afford. Average private rental prices increased by more than 10% in a single year in Hackney in 2024, up to an average of £2,346 (ONS data). Meanwhile, as the population has grown, the amount of social housing has stayed flat (ONS data). This means there’s less support for families who are struggling to afford private rent.
The lack of big enough properties for families that are affordable, combined with not enough social housing support, makes living in Hackney very difficult for families. As a result, more than 1 in 4 families in Hackney are living in overcrowded conditions (30%), making Hackney the 3rd worst place in the UK for overcrowding of families (Census data). Lots of families are choosing to leave Hackney instead.
Why is housing so bad for families in Hackney?
Hackney is under huge pressure to build more housing - and they have. They’ve built 13,000 domestic properties over the last 10 years (EPC data), which is more than a 10% increase in the number of properties. They’ve built so much that since 2020, salary growth has actually outpaced property price growth, meaning Hackney properties are getting more affordable to buy every year (ONS & land registry data). On the face of it, Hackney could be seen as a success story for housing.
But the problem is, Hackney has pursued quantity of housing at the expense of the type of housing society needs.
Nationally, 3 bed houses are in the shortest supply (Zoopla). Yet in Hackney, houses are being converted into flats and not being replaced. 90% of the new properties built are flats (EPC data), typically with only 1 or 2 bedrooms. If there’s not enough appropriate housing for families to live in, they leave. And the biggest housing problem nationally gets pushed onto other regions.
Hackney doesn’t have much land going spare, and when their housing targets are in terms of the number of properties built, it makes sense that they would build the densest housing types they have demand for.
Thinking of the bigger picture, it’s a problem for public services & teachers if children are concentrated in only certain parts of the country. It’s a problem for society if places are segregated by age, with people having to leave an area they love because there isn’t appropriate housing for them. It’s a problem if an area’s sense of community breaks down as their population becomes more and more transient.
Housing quantity targets are not enough to solve the housing crisis. We need to build the type of housing society needs in the places society needs it as well.