By Pete Challis
According to Wikipedia, the first meaning of the adjective Orwellian is that it ‘describes official deception’.
In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four the three slogans of ‘The Inner Party’ are “WAR IS PEACE,” “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,” and “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”.
In true Orwellian style, Grant Shapps has now added “UNAFFORDABLE IS AFFORDABLE”.
Shapps told the Tory Party Conference in 2009: “We want to create nothing less than a nation of homebuilders”. Like George Osborne’s ‘March of the Makers’ it simply isn’t happening.
Figures from the Homes and Communities Agency (National Housing Statistics) dramatically reveal the collapse in the number of new homes started that are supported by the HCA.
The biggest collapse has occurred in new social rented homes where starts are down a massive 97.06%.
When Shapps talks about a big increase in ‘affordable homes’ he means the ‘affordable rent’ product – at rents up to 80% of market rents – not affordable homes generally. The increase for ‘affordable rent’ is indeed huge. To work out the increase you divide the figure for 2011/12 by the figure for the previous year and multiply by 100. As any GCSE mathematician will tell you, any figure divided by 0 equals infinity.
In 289 councils NO social rented homes started.
Social rented homes were started in only 35 council areas. Here they are, with the number of starts.
- Greenwich – 203
- Brent – 126
- Birmingham – 122
- Telford and Wrekin – 64
- Nuneaton and Bedworth – 51
- Swindon – 45
- Northampton – 42
- Cambridge – 36
- Tower Hamlets – 31
- Slough – 31
- County Durham – 30
- Wiltshire – 28
- Stoke-on-Trent – 26
- Preston – 25
- Wolverhampton – 23
- Middlesbrough – 20
- Stroud – 20
- Mid Sussex – 17
- Leeds – 16
- Brighton and Hove – 15
- Basildon – 11
- East Devon – 11
- Waltham Forest – 10
- Spelthorne – 8
- Sunderland – 6
- Kettering – 5
- Charnwood – 5
- West Dorset – 5
- North East Lincolnshire -5
- West Oxfordshire – 4
- Derby – 3
- Bedford 1
- North Tyneside – 1
- Northumberland – 1
- Christchurch – 1
The detailed local authority figures published by the HCA reveal that there were NO HCA funded starts at all in almost one in 4 councils (80 out of 326) and less than 10 starts in another 35 councils.
The list of councils where not a single new HCA-supported home of any type was started includes Ipswich; Norwich; Luton; Southend on Sea; Kensington and Chelsea; Westminster; Wigan; Nottingham; Newham; Gateshead; Carlisle; York; Brentwood (local MP – Eric Pickles);and Welwyn Hatfield (local MP – Grant Shapps).