One solution to the housing crisis is being totally overlooked ...Middle East

The argument goes that loosening planning rules would remove bottlenecks preventing private investors from building more homes. This would in turn provide enough supply to put downward pressure on house prices (and ultimately rents).

Planning reform may increase housebuilding rates, but it will not guarantee that the labour force for building more homes can be found. Nor does it necessarily secure the investment needed, especially in a period of elevated interest rates.

Feasibility is not the only problem. The intense focus on the volume of housebuilding has little regard for tenure, quality, location, or public benefit. This leaves the actual characteristics of new housing unaddressed.

The Build to Rent sector – where institutional landlords (such as pension funds and asset managers) build new homes solely to rent them out – has been on the rise, with the sector trebling in five years and now representing one in five new homes.

With the UK now the number one market for overseas investment in property, and Build to Rent dominated by the same players, this startling trend requires more scrutiny.

House prices are falling in one Welsh county - Cornwall is next

At the same time, four of the biggest five Build to Rent landlords are owned or majority-owned by funds based overseas. Private equity firms also represent a huge part of the industry. This raises questions about the types of practises these landlords are prone to engage in.

We don’t have to look far for better alternatives. Britain already has one straightforward, tried-and-tested solution: public housing.

First, this could provide a reliable and certain pipeline of investment in new homes up and down the country.

Adam Peggs is senior press officer at Common Wealth and writes and researches on the UK housing emergency.

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