Enough houses! A point of view from Julie Mabberley of Wantage and Grove Campaign Group

LATEST research claims councils have granted enough planning consents to meet the Government’s target of building one million new homes by 2020 but developers are failing to build them.

More units have been given permission by planning officials than started by builders in every year for at least the past decade – and the gap has been growing ever wider in recent years. Over the past two years, planning permissions have been granted in sufficient quantities to meet a target of 250,000 a year.

New analysis from independent think-tank Civitas shows that planning permission has been awarded in England for 2,035,835 housing units between 2006 and 2015. That is an average of 204,000 new homes a year.

Homes started to be built recorded by the government during the same 10-year period numbered only 1,261,350, however. This means that there have been 774,485 more permissions than homes built.

This shortfall has been growing wider over the past five years. A significant increase in the number of planning permissions granted since 2011 has not been matched by a comparable increase in homes started or completed.

What these figures show is that councils are issuing planning permissions in greater numbers than at any time for at least a decade. The bigger problem, and what lies at the root of our housing shortage, is that landowners and developers are not getting approved sites built out quickly enough.

As the headline in the Telegraph said "Developers have been accused of deliberately restricting the supply of new houses to keep prices high".

These statistics confirm what we know from local experience.

Huge developments have been given outline permission but are not being built. In the meantime, developers submit more and more applications and we are powerless to do anything about it.

It's only a couple of weeks since the Oxford Mail reported that over 200 people marched through Oxford protesting about the unaffordability of housing in Oxford for key workers such as those in our health and education services.

Organisations like hospitals, care homes, universities, schools and local councils are finding it difficult to recruit and retain staff because of the house prices in Oxfordshire.

It really is time that the government started listening to councils and campaign groups and moved the emphasis from pushing for permission to be granted to ensuring that those applications approved provide the homes that should be built to meet the real needs of key workers (especially in Oxfordshire) at rental and purchase prices they can afford.