The purpose of the event was to introduce the ippr (Institute for Public Policy Research) report 'We must fix it: Delivering reform of the building sector to meet the UK's housing and economic challenges' and to discuss the issues and lessons for planning policy arising.
Beyond outlining the findings from the research as included in the Report, the author Matt Griffith introduced and spoke to three graphs - take this link to see the graphs but please read the following introduction before you do:
The aim of the graphs is to examine the current official view of possible supply responses to the recession with our knowledge of what happened to the sector after the previous recessionary shocks of 1972 and 1990. The purpose is to suggest that current Government expectations are optimistic, and suggest the building sector has particular issues that mean a rapid 'bounce back' in output is unlikely.
Scenarios A, B and C were set out by the, then, Government's official advisor on housing research, NHPAU (the National Housing & Planning Advisory Unit) in 2009. Scenario A is the 'optimistic' scenario, B the 'realistic' and C the 'pessimistic' one. They include output in units for both social and private market housebuilding output (Axis Y). The data series on Axis X starts at 2005 for all three scenarios, so year 4 (the year before the sharp drop) is 2008. Axis X shows 1 to 21 because we are then overlaying historical data - see next.
The final two graphs overlay the historical experiences of 1972 and 1990 over these scenarios - aligning the peak of both the previous output cycles with 2007 (i.e. year 3). 1972's peak (starting) year is 1972, the 1990 line's peak (starting) year is 1988.
NB: Both these two previous historical lines measure market housing output only (i.e. exclude social housing output). Both show a 'lost decade' or more for market output, and no rapid 'bounce back' that NHPAU’s work suggested should be expected.
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