Promises on housing in the Programme for Government “fall drastically short” of what is needed, a representative of the construction industry said.
The Executive said it will “unlock the combined skills and resources of government, the private and third sectors, finding solutions and creating opportunities to transform supply and improve quality across the whole housing system”.
It added: “We will ensure that the planning system supports the delivery of the appropriate supply of housing, creating sustainable and inclusive spaces, and work with NI Water to help facilitate housing growth.”
After seven months in government, and expectation that there would be a detailed solution to alleviating housing need, a further objective set out in the plan is to come up with a plan.
The document says: “We will deliver a Northern Ireland Housing Supply Strategy to provide a long-term framework for the policies and actions required to increase the supply of homes across all tenures and reduce housing stress.”
There is no timeframe for achieving this.
The devolved government will seek agreement from the UK Treasury to allow the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) more flexibility on borrowing “to increase investment in its homes, improve energy efficiency, and contribute to new supply”.
Esmond Birnie, a senior economist and member of the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council, said it is not clear how feasible this plan is, but added: “There may be other approaches which could be taken to NIHE structure and status which would allow it to borrow from the private capital markets.”
Mark Spence, chief executive of the Construction Employers Federation (CEF), said the commitment “to provide more social, affordable and sustainable housing is to be welcomed”.
But overall the programme “falls drastically short of what is needed in order to deal with Northern Ireland’s housing crisis”.
“The Executive doesn’t appear to have fully understood that against a backdrop of a 60-year low of housing completions in 2023 - a record likely to be eclipsed by a new low in 2024 - fundamental reform is required to deal with the key blocks to growing homebuilding,” Mr Spence said.
“We believe it is crucial that the Executive treats housing as its main priority for the rest of this mandate because, if it does not, it risks removing from an entire generation the prospect of a home to call their own.
“Given the Executive’s one-year capital budget of £2bn for 2024/25 - the same in cash terms as some 17 years ago – and a recurrent need from NI Water from this of at least £600m per annum for the next decade,
“The Executive must face the urgent reality that the overall settlement, and what is likely in the years ahead, goes nowhere near the level required in order to deliver many of the key projects which form part of the draft Programme for Government, never mind NI Water’s PC21 and PC27 programmes.
“Although further related strategies such as the Executive’s Investment Strategy and the Housing Supply Strategy are yet to emerge, it is therefore vital that urgent steps are taken to deal with decades of underfunding in our water and wastewater system which means that homebuilders cannot get new housing connections in large parts of the country.”
Mr Birnie described the programme as “very thin”, with repeated mentions of not enough funding from the UK government. There is no mention of revenue-generating measures, he said.
“I don’t think there is enough balance on this issue,” Mr Birnie said. “Taking the last 30-40 years overall it is not true to say NI has been persistently under-funded.”
He added: “The available evidence suggests that, apart from a few years at the start of this decade, funding per head (relative to England) exceeded reasonable estimates of the extent to which need per head was higher than England because of factors such as a more rural population, impact of the Troubles/and its legacy etc.”
