Labour's housing record compared with Mrs Thatcher's

Labour's record on affordable housing came under attack recently from their own housing spokesperson on the Greater London Authority.

Tom Copley, Labour’s housing spokesman in the capital, said that Margaret Thatcher’s government had built more council flats and houses in a single year than New Labour’s managed in its entire period in office.
 
This is correct. The official data shows that the Blair and Brown governments built 7,870 council houses (local authority tenure) over the course of 13 years. (If we don’t include 2010 – the year when David Cameron became PM – this number drops to 6,510.) Mr Copley has contrasted this figure with the record of Mrs Thatcher’s government, which never built fewer than 17,710 homes in a year.
 
More details given at the "Full Facts" factcheck site here.
 
If you look at total social housing built including housing association properties, the contrast between Labour and Conservative housebuilding achievement is less dramatic. After an initial drop in affordable housing construction under New Labour they managed to increase the numbers again from 2007 to 2009. At the peak of this mini-boom in 2009, Labour oversaw more affordable completions than in some Conservative years, though not as many as the peak Conservative years. Average affordable home construction rates were still higher over the term of the Thatcher government than New Labour's.
 
Note - figures in this post are not comparable with those in my recent post on how to lie - or tell the truth - with statistics because that post was looking at the graph of total housing starts and completions while this post only refers to homes defined as "affordable."

Comments

Jim said…
Who coined the term "affordable housing" it has be one of the daftest terms ever.

think about it, if any house was not "affordable", then it would not be built. Builders would not build it as they would know they could never sell it.

You could make an argument that some existing palaces and things are affordable, meaning no one could afford to buy them from the current "Owners" which may or may not be true, but the fact of the matter with those is its quite a pointless argument as its hardly likely you will find the Sistine chapel, Buckingham palace, Canterbury Cathedral or the great pyramid of Giza for sale in your move.
Jim said…
I also find the term "near miss" used in accident recording quite daft. The only way you can nearly miss something is to actually hit it.

"I was driving along in the car and I nearly missed the cyclist"

Chris Whiteside said…
For housing/planning policy purposes "affordable housing" is usually defined as housing offered for sale or rent at a price or rent which people on a given proportion of average income could reasonably be expected to pay. Most local planning authorities and housing authorities have a definition of what that is - there is sometimes quite a debate about it.

I suspect that in the article I referenced, however, "affordable housing" may have meant council housing plus housing association properties. And if you are saying there could be issues withy that definition you are quite right.
Chris Whiteside said…
I think a "near miss" RTA is like falling in love - impossible to precisely define or measure but if you experience this happening you are not in any doubt about it.
Jim said…
Why not just call it "Social Housing" or "lower priced housing"

"Affordable" is a very relative term. I personally can not afford a rolls royce car, but lots of people can.
So is a Rolls Royce "affordable"?
-well of course it is. Its just I cant personally afford one right now, it does not mean that its an unobtainable target
Chris Whiteside said…
People often do use the term "Social Housing" and, as I inferred in a previous comment, that term is often used interchangeably with "affordably housing" (misleading as there is such a thing as low-cost market housing.)

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