There will be a further 3.7m households in the UK by 2030, according to population projections from the Office for National Statistics, an increase of 13.6% on today.
Over the next five years, the ONS predicts that 1.3m households will be created, bringing the UK total to 28.8m by 2020.
Meanwhile, housebuilding starts during the past five years have totalled just 729,000 homes.
Assuming this many units are built again over the next five years, there will be enough to meet just 56% of the new housing demand.
Even if the Conservative government’s target of 1m homes is built over the next five years, there will still be a shortfall of more than 300,000 – and this figure does not take into consideration the shortage that already exists, generally estimated to be more than 1m homes.
According to analysis, the largest shortfalls are in London, the South East and, surprisingly, Scotland – with Northern Ireland the only area in the UK building enough to meet demand.
Alongside this, while more than 70% of the UK’s housing stock consists of three-bedroom or larger houses, the average size of households is set to continue to decline, further compounding the crisis.
