Lunchtime news Wednesday 24 October 2023

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) revised its population projections yesterday. The population in Britain is set to pass 70 million within 25 years, or a net increase of 400,000 a year. The rise has been put down to an increase in family size, greater life expectancy, and higher-than-expected migration levels in recent years. The ONS however stressed that the projections were based on current trends and these figures became less reliable the further into the future they looked.

Kate Barker, member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee and adviser to Gordon Brown on housing, has warned that the economy is still vulnerable to a downturn. With none of the triggers to correct the market as in the 1990s – high unemployment, high interest rates, an economic slowdown generally – Barker believes a source of weakness could be the buy-to-let market. The sector accounted for 12 per cent of the total mortgage market this year, so ‘decline in this demand could well dampen the market’.

A BBC Wales investigation into house possessions show that they are at their highest level for eight years and the rise is expected to continue. Already 3,000 possession orders have been granted by the courts for the first half of the year. With house prices trebling over the past decade and the series of interest rate rises taking hold, this number is expected to grow.

And finally, professor of human geography at the University of Sheffield, Danny Dorling, has redrawn the ’north-south’ dividing line. By looking at life expectancy, house prices and housing wealth, education and finally voting patterns, the line has moved north – beginning at the Severn Estuary and moving diagonally towards the Humber hitting the coast just below Grimsby. Professor Dorling said in regards to housing prices that there was in effect a ‘£100,000 cliff between north and south’.