The majority of voters feel Labour is failing to fix the housing crisis – with a third of people saying they are struggling to pay their rent or mortgage, a new poll has found.
Ipsos polling, shared exclusively with The i Paper, shows 49 per cent of people think that the Government is doing a bad job at improving housing in Britain, compared to 17 per cent who think it is doing a good job.
Meanwhile, 33 per cent of people polled said they are concerned about their ability to pay their rent and mortgage repayments.
It is another problem for Labour, which is dealing with the aftermath of its disastrous local election results that have left Sir Keir Starmer battling to save his job. Party insiders believe Cabinet ministers could move to oust him within days if a speech to shore up his leadership fails.
Since taking office in 2024, Labour has passed its landmark Renters’ Rights Act, the Planning and Infrastructure Act and begun work to get their much-anticipated leasehold reforms through by the end of the current Parliament. It has also announced the locations of their “next generation” of new towns across England.
However, the Government is not currently on track to build the 1.5 million new homes they promised in opposition, with just over 300,000 homes completed during its first 18 months in office.
According to the Ipsos poll, Reform was the party most people backed to do a better job than Labour to improve housing in Britain (26 per cent), followed by the Greens and the Conservatives (22 per cent).
However, Reform was also the party most people believed would do a worse job (45 per cent), followed by the Conservatives (35 per cent) and the Greens (34 per cent).
Despite real-term house price falls in some places, both house prices and private rents remain at near-historic highs.
The average house price topped £300,000 for the first time in February. Meanwhile, private rents reached 36.1 per cent of average earnings in March, the highest level on record.
Affordability was a particular concern for respondents to the Ipsos poll. Around three-quarters of people said they were not confident that homes will become more affordable to buy (75 per cent), that homelessness will fall (75 per cent).
Poor public awareness of Labour’s landmark housing legislation and key policies appears to be part of the problem, according to Ben Marshall, research director at Ipsos.
Just 27 per cent of Britons said they know “a great deal” or “a fair amount” about the Renters’ Rights Act, but, after seeing a selection of the changes it will make, most (52 per cent) said they thought it would have a positive impact.
While there is “a degree of goodwill towards the Renters Rights Act and general positivity about its potential impact, awareness of the Act is patchy,” Marshall said.
“One in eight private renters haven’t heard of it at all, and a fifth or more haven’t heard of several procedures to protect them from rent increases.”
Marshall added: “This survey highlights the affordability struggles many Britons – especially renters – continue to face, as well as their pessimism about the future.”
Analysis: How housing vows failed to stem Labour losses
Housing was a key issue in last week’s local elections, which saw Labour lose seats across the country to Reform, as well as losing votes to the Green Party.
In Wandsworth, where the Labour-controlled council had been building council homes, the Conservatives gained control after the Greens split the left-wing vote and campaigned on the issue of rent control, which, as things stand, councillors do not have the power to introduce in England.
Similarly, in Hackney, the Greens gained their first mayor and deputy mayor after years of Labour rule. In this part of London, they also campaigned on rent control, which is not currently a national Labour Party policy, even though London’s Labour Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has called for the power to implement city-wide controls on rent.
In Labour Mayor Andy Burnham’s patch of Greater Manchester, the party of Government lost a decades-long majority in Tameside, where one-third of seats were up for election, with Reform winning 18 out of 19 seats.
In Wigan, Reform won 24 of the 25 seats available, and 13 of the 21 in Salford, but Labour held on to its majority.
In both places, the Greens secured hundreds of votes after attacking Britain’s Labour Government’s plans to build new homes on green belt land (which can now be reclassified as “grey belt” under certain circumstances).
The Liberal Democrats secured a majority in Stockport for the first time in 15 years after picking up two extra seats. The local Lib Dem party here criticised the new housing targets imposed on the area by Britain’s national Labour Government.
By Vicky Spratt
- Ipsos surveyed 2,195 British adults aged between 16 and 75 years old, surveyed online between 3 April and 7 April