An Analysis of Alignments of District Housing Targets in England

Context: It has been claimed that recently, in England, the places with the greatest amount of housing built were the places that least needed them. This is an accusation that has echoes in a number of countries around the globe. The lack of construction leads to greater unaffordability and a lower level of economic activity than could have been achieved if labour, particularly those with high human capital, was not so constrained as to where they could afford to live. The recent National Planning Policy Framework for England imposes mandatory targets on housing planning authorities. As such, the following question is raised: will the targets result in additional residential homes being located in places of greater need than the prevailing pattern? Research Questions: The paper sets out to consider the spatial mismatch between housing additions and national benefit in terms of unaffordability and productivity. Specifically, do the concentrations of high and/or low rates of the prevailing rates of additional dwellings and the target rates of adding dwellings correspond with the clusters of high and/or low unaffordability and productivity? A further question considered is: does the spatial distribution of additional dwellings match the clusters of population growth? Method: The values of the variables are transformed at the first stage into Anselin’s LISA categories. LISA maps can reveal unusually high spatial concentrations of values, or clusters. The second stage entails comparing sets of the transformed data for agreement of the classifications. An agreement coefficient is provided by Fleiss’s kappa. Data: The data used is of additional dwellings, the total number of dwellings, population estimates, gross value added per hour worked (productivity data), and house price–earnings ratios. The period of study covers the eight years prior to 2020 and the two years after, omitting 2020 itself due to the unusual impact on economic activity. All the data is at local authority district level. Findings: The hot and cold spots of additional dwellings do not correspond those of house price–earnings ratios or productivity. However, population growth hot spots show moderate agreement with those of where additional dwellings are concentrated. This is in line with findings from elsewhere, suggesting that population follows housing supply. Concentrations of districts with relatively high targets per unit of existing stocks are found correspond (agree strongly) with clusters of house price–earnings ratios. Links between productivity and housing are much weaker. Conclusions: The strong link between targets and affordability suggests that if the targets are met, the claim that the places that build the most housing are the places that least need them can be challenged. That said, house-price–earnings ratios present a view of unaffordability that will favour greater building in the countryside rather than cities outside of London, which runs against concentrating new housing in urban areas consistent with fostering clusters/agglomerations implicit in the new modern industrial strategy.