JLL estimates £205bn cost to clear housing waiting lists and calls for end of Right to Buy

Ahead of the general election, JLL also called on politicians of all parties to acknowledge the scale of the challenge facing England’s housing market and to set realistic and achievable housebuilding targets.

The report estimated that building enough homes to meet current demand on waiting lists would cost approximately £205bn. This figure assumes that local or national government could provide land at zero cost, with a conservative average build cost of £160,000.

The Conservative government had committed to building 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s, but it has failed to meet this goal so far and previously softened its commitment to the targets. The party’s latest manifesto has pledged to deliver 1.6 million new homes in England in the next parliament, if re-elected.

The Labour Party has promised a similar volume of new homes if it comes to power, pledging to have 1.5 million new homes built over five years.

JLL said its analysis found there is due to be a shortfall of 570,000 homes between 2024 and 2028, compared with the target of building 300,000 homes a year.

Marcus Dixon, director of UK residential research at JLL, said: “Pressure on social housing waiting lists in England has been building for some time and we have reached crisis point.

“Overall development has been slow in the last few years and has fallen short of targets, heaping more pressure on waiting lists.

“As a first step to easing the pressure on waiting lists, the next government needs to scrap Right to Buy, which has seen thousands of social homes being removed every year. Additionally, political parties need to be honest about the barriers preventing large-scale housebuilding and set realistic development targets.

“Without doing so, voters will be trapped in a cycle of disappointment when the government of the day fails to deliver on its promises.”

JLL’s report comes at a time when local authorities are spending huge sums on housing families in temporary accommodation while they wait to be offered social housing.

It cited figures from the Local Government Association showing councils spent £1.7bn on this service in 2022-23, with the number of households in temporary accommodation rising 89 per cent, to 104,000 households, in the past decade.

JLL also cited government figures that show there are currently 1.3 million households on social waiting lists in England, with the number rising by 161,000 (14 per cent) over the past five years.

According to the report, the pressure on housing waiting lists is particularly acute in London, where waiting lists are equivalent to 9.5 per cent of all households.

However, waiting lists are still long outside London. In the North East, these lists are equivalent to 6.5 per cent of all households, in the North West 6.5 per cent and in Yorkshire and the Humber 6.4 per cent, compared with the national average of 5.5 per cent.