The government have released a series of fact sheets regarding the building of new homes and the reasons behind the location; design and the various infrastructures that must be planned to make communities work.

The first part is titled “The need for homes” and states that the 2021 Census concluded that there are 56.5 million people in England and if trends are to be believed, the projections are for 60.3 million people by 2045.

The reasoning for the projected figures is partially due to people living a lot longer – the 2021 census showed that 1.4 million people were over the age of 85 and this is projected to rise to 3.2 million by 2045. Inevitably this will necessitate the need for housing or shared residences with specialised infrastructure to care for the elderly.

The government’s target of 300,000 homes per year has never materialised, with the majority of housing built by private builders, rather than the local councils. Housing associations were responsible for 178,000 new homes in 2022. There are no simple answers to where houses should be built, realistically homes are needed everywhere if local people are to stay locally. For small communities keeping people local is the difference between a village managing to keep its infrastructure intact and one that becomes a ghost of itself, with no public facilities or shops and services.

The first fact sheet goes onto say that in 2002 the average salary was just under £21,000 per year. The average house price then was £102,000 which means the ratio was just under 5 times the annual salary. In 2022 the average salary was a little over £33,000 but the average house value was £275,000, a ratio of over 8 times the salary. London prices shows it is currently over 13 times the average salary.

The other factsheets include areas such as design; transport; services and schools etc which we will look at over the coming weeks.