Half of New Households Will Be Migrant Families, Govt Growth Report ‘a Hopeless Underestimate’

A pressure group has slammed new government housing statistics as hopelessly flawed, arguing they dramatically underestimate the rate of growth in England driven by high levels of net migration.

The latest release of statistics from the British government’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) cuts the level of projected household growth over the coming decades compared to the previous forecast, but Migration Watch UK has called the figures “hopeless”.

According to the ONS statistics, 159,000 new households will be created every year, on average, for the next 25 years — a total rise of 17 percent, or four million households. This figure has been slashed from the last estimate in 2014, which projected 210,000 new homes annually.

While the ONS points to young people living with their parents longer among the more up-to-date information about future living arrangements that have impacted the revision in the number of future households, it has been argued they have massively underestimated migration levels.

Commenting on the statistics, Alp Mehmet, Vice Chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: “This is a hopeless underestimate. The ONS are projecting annual net migration 25% lower than seen in the last ten years. Their high migration scenario is much more plausible and in line with the previous decade’s flows. That would mean a new home every three minutes for England as a whole, of which about half would be for migrants.”

Even the high migration model presented by the ONS is still lower than the previous 2014 estimate.

While almost every region of England is expected to see growth in the number of households in the next 25 years, the highest levels of growth are seen predominantly in the southeast and London, which is home to five of the ten fastest growing local authorities.

The British government remains under pressure to build significant numbers of housing, with commentators likening the number needed in the coming decades to the great housebuilding programmes seen after the Second World War. Yet mass migration is an often under-appreciated factor impacting the soaring demand for homes, as it pushes the national population to never-before-seen levels.

Breitbart London reported in August on Britain’s population growth, of which it is claimed 82 percent of growth in this century has been down to immigration and the children of immigrants. This rise in people demanding a finite number of homes has left young people “paying the price” in rising house prices and rents, a fact now even belatedly recognised by a government minister.

Now minister for Brexit but then housing minister Dominic Raab conceded in April that mass migration has pushed housing prices in the UK up 20 percent in 25 years, remarking at the time: “You can’t have housing taken out of the debate around immigration… If we delivered on the Government’s target of reducing immigration to the tens of thousands every year, that would have a material impact on the number of homes we need to build every year.”

Oliver JJ Lane is the editor of Breitbart London — Follow him on Twitter and Facebook