Britain needs to build 250 thousand more houses just for immigrants
British economy faces an almost impossible situation. An increasing number of immigrants would like to settle in the country, but there are not enough flats for them, and the price of the existing ones is rather high due to the shortage. Now the construction industry should be boosted, but the sector has not fully recovered from the coronavirus crisis.
Urgent need to boost real estate construction
Britain needs to build an extra 250,000 homes just to accommodate the record number of migrants who arrived last year, analysts have warned. Investec said the chronic undersupply of homes in the UK would be worsened by the mass influx of migrants in 2022, adding to demand and pushing up rents and house prices. This trend is expected to continue in 2023.
Experts believe that new figures implied “that around 250k new homes are needed just to satisfy the last 12 months of net migration”.
In wake of the latest migration figures, Investec warned that the Government may need to revise its target to build 300,000 homes per year because the number was based on forecasts of inward migration that were much lower than actual current levels. It lends itself to the conclusion that the expected drop in net migration and its impact on housing demand is not happening, the investment bank believes.
Both legal and illegal migration put pressure on the country
Britain saw net migration of 606,000 people in 2022, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, with 1.2 million people arriving in the country and about half that number leaving. It marks a record high of net migration into Great Britain in a 12-month period.
The figures show that 1.16 million people moved to Britain from abroad in 2022, while 557 thousand left to emigrate permanently. The ONS also showed that 151 thousand of the new immigrants came from the European Union, while 202 thousand EU citizens left, a net decrease of 51 thousand in the number of EU citizens living in Britain last year.
The vast majority of people arriving – 925,000 – were non-EU nationals. The number of people moving to Britain from outside the EU has risen by 287,000 in the course of one year, according to Thursday figures by the ONS. The main driver of the increase were people coming to the UK from non-EU countries for work.
British professional organisations have long been warning the government about the fact that the primary reason for labour shortage is the continuous exodus of EU nationals due to Brexit. Only those EU citizens were allowed to remain in the country and keep all their privileges who had lawfully settled in the country before the end of 2020, but even they had to apply for a residency permit for an indefinite period, officially called the EU Settled Status. Some 7.22 million applications have been received by British authorities in Q1 2023, according to the UK Home Office’s statistics, also revealed this Thursday. Romanian citizens top the list with 1.48 million applications. By the end of March, 174,910 Hungarians living in the UK had applied for settled status from the Home Office.
Meanwhile, illegal migration is also a major concern for the government, which is trying to tighten the law to reduce the pressure on the country. According to the Home Office, 45,000 illegal immigrants crossed from France to the UK by boat last year alone, almost twice as many as the previous year. Boats from the Calais area cross at the narrowest point of the Channel, usually landing near Dover. Locals doubt that tighter immigration rules will stem the flow.