The issues

With a growing population and shrinking household sizes (fewer people on average living, in each home) England clearly needs more homes.  In 2007 200,000 new homes were built  - the highest level of housebuilding for the last 18 years.  Since the onset of the credit crunch, construction rates have fallen. 

Around 21 square miles of countryside, an area larger than Southampton, are lost to development each year. As well as losing countryside, this means correspondingly more traffic and pollution, more climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions, and more pressure on water supplies. Although housebuilding levels have fallen (130,000 homes were built last year), greenfield land continues to be allocated for development to meet the national target of 240,000 homes a year by 2016.  The threat remains that developers will 'cherry pick' green fields in preference to brownfield locations because they are easier and more profitable.

Fact: there are over 600,000 more homes than households

Home ownership has been rising for decades, and so has the amount of space we enjoy per person at home. Meanwhile household size has been falling, and so have levels of overcrowding.  The height of the housing boom - 2007 - saw more people better housed, and with more housing wealth, than ever before in history. Despite the onset of the credit crunch and fall in house prices, high house prices today remain a real problem for many people on low to moderate incomes who struggle to afford a decent home.

Building more homes won't end house price inflation
During the credit boom, house prices rose throughout the developed world, not just in England, even in countries with lots of land and big increases in housebuilding. We can't build our way out of high house prices.

A massive boost in building homes for sale would make little difference to house prices, were such a boost possible. Even a doubling in output would not be enough to prevent house prices rising faster than inflation in the long term,as a review for the Treasury by top economist Kate Barker has shown. But as well as damaging the environment and the countryside, it would impose huge infrastructure costs on the public purse (new homes are often accompanied by new roads, especially if they are built out of town).