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'There are real problems beneath the south-east's leafy affluence'
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The traditional image of the south-east of England conjures up images of leafy streets, nice houses and big gardens, and phrases such as “London’s stockbroker belt” and “rising house prices”. But, according to a new report, this idyllic picture of affluence masks an area that’s increasingly being separated into areas of great wealth and great deprivation.
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We asked housing expert and report author Andrew Heywood and Elizabeth Austerberry, the chief executive of south-east housing association Moat, what their work has uncovered – and what it means for the future of the south-east of England.
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Q. Why did you choose to study the south-east of England?
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Elizabeth Austerberry: From a distance, the south east looks fine, but when you look more closely at it there is a very different picture in very different areas of the south-east.
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Andrew Heywood: Unlike the conventional view of the south east as being a little haven of leafy affluence, where everything is traditional, safe and semi-rural, actually you’ve got a quite divided though quite wealthy region. You have a significant proportion of people on low incomes who are increasingly getting displaced to the south and east of the region. There are real problems here that actually do need to be highlighted.
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Q. And what’s the impact of these problems?
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AH: At the very bottom you’ve got the sad spectacle of homeless families from London being shipped out in the cheaper parts of thesouth east, such as Portsmouth, Hastings and Dover. But you’re also getting people shipped out of places in the south-east to places as far away asWales.
EA: And the areas they are moving to are the areas that already have larger-than-average poverty levels and poorer access to jobs. You have the people who are more deprived moving to areas where there are already more deprived people.Nothing in that move necessarily helps them. In just puts them in a cheaper area. It’s a vicious circle.
Q. So you end up with a stark divide between poor and rich areas of the south east?
EA: Yes. We’re part of a south-east housing group and round the table you can hear the different issues that people, for example, working on the cheaper Kent coast have compared to people who work in Greenwich. There’s a very interesting dichotomy there. In the areas to the west of London the number of benefit claimants has gone down, whereas in the whole of the south-east with the exception of Brighton and most of Kent, have seen the number of benefit claimants go up.That’s not necessarily because the people no longer need benefits, it’s because those people on benefits have had to move.
Q. Why is this?AH: The south east has a chronic problem with poor housing supply. It requires around 67,000homes a year to keep up with demographic trends and last year produced 19,000. You’ve got chronic lack of supply and not enough affordable homes being built. And thelocal authorities that are building a small numberof new affordable homes are actually losing far more than that through theright to buy.
Q. Where do the people moving to these cheaper areas live?
AH: Alot of people end up in the private rented sector. That takes pressure off local authorities in the short term, but the problem is that, as private landlords themselves told me, while they provide a good service to a large majority of their tenants, they are not really equipped to provide the levels of support to the very low-income and vulnerable households that are increasingly seeking homes in that sector.
EA:I’m not saying there aren’t some great private landlords out there, but I think housing associations and local authorities make better landlords for people who are more vulnerable and more dependent. And people have no form of security in aprivately rented house. If you think of a young family with children in school, it’s quite difficult when they get moved around because they have their tenancy ended. Plus, if people go into the private rented sector where the rents are higher then the housing benefit bill is just going to get higher.
Q. If expensive areas keep sending their poorest people into these areas, how can you stop them become centres of deprivation?
EA: It’s very difficult. The problem is that government grants to build affordable housing are not targeted at getting people to put houses in the most deprived areas. We need a system that incentivises people to build in areas that are more difficult. One of the difficulties is that there is no great way of funding a regeneration project at the moment – it’s very difficult. We’ve got one of our own but you can’t do many of them because it’s very expensive. The system doesn’t encourage people to invest in the areas that really need it the most.
Q. So where is new development encouraged in the south-east?
EA: Because grants for building new affordable homes are very low, every housing association is cross-subsidising their housing programme with profits from other parts of the business. We do it throughselling homes for sale and shared ownership. That encourages us to develop a mixed community where we have some housing for sale, a bit of shared ownership and someaffordable social housing. But in poorer areas there’s less of a market for housing for sale so it doesn’t generate themoney we need to build affordable homes. Subsidised housingneeds subsidy. Subsidised housing in areas of great deprivation requires even more subsidy.
Q. What are the dangers if these problems go unchecked?
AH: If its not addressed it just gradually goes on getting worse as has the whole position of housing in England and Wales for the last 30 years. If you look at the beginnings of chronic shortage of housing and declining affordability you have to go back to the mid-80s really. Ironically, some of the actions of that government that presented itself as being committed to home ownership actually laid the seeds for undermining home ownership.
This article is part of the Guardian’s Big Ideas series. Click here to find out more about this project and our partners.
