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Shapps comes under fire on housing starts

Friday, 25 November 2011 12:22 PM

Grant Shapps has come under further fire today over his decision to announce the government's housing strategy the day before the publication of shockingly low affordable housing figures.

The homes and communities agency (HCA) said on Tuesday that affordable housing starts are down to just 454 in the last six months, compared to almost 14,000 in the same period last year.

Speaking on the Today programme the housing minister defended his decision to announce the housing strategy on Monday, saying that he "did not know" the numbers which were due to come out the next day.

He added that the figures are normally only of interest to "the industry" and that to engineer the government's release to coincide with the figures may be seen as manipulation, concluding that "you can't win".

Jack Dromey, Labour's shadow housing minister, blasted Shapps for "misleading" the public over what he described as the "worst housing crisis in a generation".

He said: "Grant Shapps dismissed these catastrophic figures as being 'internal' which people don’t normally take any notice of.

"The millions in need of a decent home who saw only fifty-six affordable homes started in London, one in the East of England and none in the North West, will have been shocked at the housing minister's cavalier attitude.

"Cameron's government knew a month in advance that these figures were coming, but seem to have timed their cynical announcement of a “housing revolution” the day before the truth could be told of the biggest fall in affordable house building in history."

The HCA gave some explanation for the low stats, notably the period of transition following the ending of the National Affordable Housing Programme and the launch of the Affordable Homes Programme.

This means that not all starts have been counted, as contracts are not yet in place.

Shapps said: "We're in between two different types of affordable housing programmes.

"The one that we've introduced the contracts have now been laid."

He added that up to the end of this parliament there would be 170,000 new affordable homes, 20,000 more than the government's initial target.

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