Although Greater Manchester has seen a 12% increase in number of new built houses in 2015, the region is still far behind the amount needed.
Government figures reveal that a total of 4,260 new homes were built in Greater Manchester in the last year – 460 more houses than the year before.
Of course, this sounds like great news for anyone trying to move to the area to begin with. And it is. But it also points out that the city is still well behind the pace of house building across the rest of England.
The increase all over the country was registered at an average of 21% regarding the number of completed homes, in other words last year saw an extra of 25,170 new home built.
Manchester accounted for 870 out of those newly-finished homes, up by 24% from the previous year.
Impressive at first, but when compared to the area’s peak in 2008, when Greater Manchester welcomed an extra 3,520 new homes, the recent numbers seem to lose a bit of their power.
Not all of Manchester’s boroughs were lucky enough to even register a rise in numbers in the last year. Several of them, in fact, saw a fall in total numbers of completed homes in 2015.
Greater Manchester’s Stockport, for example, only registered 260 new homes, a drop of 35% from the 400 properties built one year prior.
Leader of Stockport Council, Sue Derbyshire, stated those figures came as a surprise to her but was convinced that it wasn’t the result of a lack in council action, whilst also explaining that there is a fair number of developments which have been granted planning permission in 2015 but haven’t been completed yet.
She said: “I think that it tends to be that building tends to be started in one year and finished in the next. It is nothing that we’re doing which is discouraging house building.”
Nevertheless, Derbyshire also voiced her opinion that this was not even close to enough new houses and that Greater Manchester as a whole region needs to build more accommodation.
Oldham, another Greater Manchester borough, also suffered a considerable drop in number of new homes being built. The borough only registered 300 new homes finished by the end of 2015, a 41% decrease from 2014’s 510 new homes built.
The council fought those results by arguing that the results don’t represent reality due to a difference in the time scale used in the report, stating that Oldham was actually well ahead of its target.
A spokesperson for Oldham Council said: “All councils are under pressure to provide housing. We are meeting our housing need with the finances we are given by the government.”
“We are not underachieving in any way.”
Source: Manchester Evening News
