The Institute of Economic Affairs released a report last week that told us something that we, in the industry, already know: Britain’s housing crisis is “entirely self-inflicted.”
Decades of successive governments have been diagnosing the same illness, writing out the same prescription, but ultimately failing to make anyone take their medicine.
In other words, the problem has been identified over and over again, but never acted upon in a convincing way. Not enough allocated building land, not enough fluidity in the planning process, and certainly not enough building our way out of it.
We didn’t need a think tank to tell us this, but it helps when they do, because it pushes the issue back out into the open again. Not only that, but it can also help to push it back up the agenda.
Figures from Dataloft reveal there have been 612 properties constructed in Edgware over the past 5 years. 612 new properties in half a decade, just 122 per year, for an area of London with a local population of 77,435, living in 26,091 dwellings – over 45% of households being families with children. There are currently only 136 new homes under construction.
Fortunately, given the housing need we have here in North London, there are 4,479 more homes in the planning pipeline. Well – I say ‘fortunately’; not everyone approves of the plans for this level of building here, which in large part is due to the redevelopment of the Broadwalk Centre in the heart of Edgware. But many of those same voices lament the lack of housing for our young people, or lament the prices that properties have reached. I’m afraid we can’t have it both ways. But in any case, I talk here purely about the numbers – we need more housing locally to solve an issue, and there are significant numbers of homes in the planning pipeline.
That is not the case everywhere.
And the housing crisis is an issue we are facing across the nation.
Numbers to concern us
Zoom out and the picture gets starker still. England saw 143,110 homes built in 2025-26 – a drop on the year before, and the lowest completion total since 2015-16. Against a government target of 1.5 million new homes this Parliament, independent trackers estimate the country is running at little more than a fifth of the pace needed to get there on schedule.
And this is happening in a country where, as the IEA points out, only around a tenth of the land is actually built on. We are not short of space. We are, however, short of the political will to use it. It is not always popular to suggest using more of it, either – and that is the reality planners and officials have to contend with.
And that reaction is understandable. In England alone, let alone Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, there are over 1,000,000 empty homes, with 350,000 people in urgent need of secure accommodation.
That is the housing equivalent of several major cities standing dark and unoccupied, while young would-be first-time buyers are being priced out of their local areas, and desperate tenants are being pushed into unsuitable housing – or worse still, falling out of the system altogether.
We are failing to build enough houses in this country. But we are failing, at the same time, to properly use the ones we’ve already got.
Why we set up Petermans Housing Initiatives
We cannot solve the national housing crisis alone, but we can identify practical opportunities to make better use of the homes, partnerships and investment already available.
These two connected challenges are among the reasons we established our sister company, Petermans Housing Initiatives.
First, empty stock has to come back into use. Some of that means working with owners of long-vacant properties to bring homes directly into the social and affordable housing pool. Some of it is about getting private stock that’s sitting idle back onto the market, easing pressure and improving affordability for ordinary buyers and renters in the process. Every home brought back into circulation is one that does not need to be built from scratch. These properties can also help what we call the “missing middle”: working households who have an income but remain unable to access suitable housing, perhaps because of their credit history, the deposit required or another barrier within the conventional rental market. By bringing together responsible landlords and the right housing associations, we believe more of these households can be given a secure and affordable home – particularly across London, where new housing delivery is constrained by a genuine shortage of available building land.
Second, we are getting involved in the build-to-rent conversation – and this takes us elsewhere across the country. Build-to-rent has tended to cluster in the capital and a handful of major cities, but there is a strong case for expanding it into towns across the country. Professionally managed, purpose-built rental homes – including affordable and housing-association provision – can give tenants greater security while taking pressure off an overstretched private rented sector. We believe in the opportunity here, and we intend to be part of shaping it.
Encouraging Noises, but We Need Action
To give the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government some credit, the tone out of Westminster over the past fortnight has been slightly more encouraging than we’ve heard in some time. A focus on unlocking delivery in the social and council housing sector, and renewed talk of stripping back the friction in both planning and buying.
But we’ve been here before – or somewhere very similar. Words on planning reform are cheap; delivery is something else.
If ministers are serious about making the planning process and the house-buying process genuinely quicker and simpler, with fewer hoops, fewer delays, and ultimately fewer homes stuck in limbo between consent and completion, then now is the moment to prove it. We really don’t need more consultation.
We need more housebuilding and a lot less friction holding up the process.