We read so much about the UK housing shortage and listen to so much nonsense spouted by each political party on how they would sort it. The reality is they can’t do anything until they address the crux of the problem.

1. Population Growth

The UK population grows by about 400,000 annually, and we build around 120,000-200,000 properties. We've continued this process for so long that there is a shortage of around 2 to 2.5 million homes. Without significantly reducing population growth we wouldn't catch up with house-building needs decades.

2. Lack of Contractors

The UK has a huge shortage of experienced tradespeople and the majority who are trained don’t work on new builds as the pay rates are considerably less than what they can earn in residential and commercial work. One of the reasons that new builds are so poorly built is that they use under-qualified or imported labour to complete the work.

3. Education

Stopping 16-year-olds from learning trades until they're 18 is just daft. 16-year-olds want to learn a trade not T-Levels, why get rid of the City and Guilds and replace them with T-Levels where the first few years are wasted time? So many of those desperately needed tradespeople drift off into other work and who can blame them, after seeing the content of these courses I don't. This creates a supply and demand issue as the experienced ones leaving the industry outnumber the new ones entering.

There is no way we can solve the housing shortage or address the cost of rent or purchase until all 3 points above are resolved. Simply saying you will build more houses is just political nonsense that should be called out for what it is.