Member's statement: Housing Supply Strategy

Member's statement by Ms Kellie Armstrong on 7 October 2024.

MLA

Ms Kellie Armstrong

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

7 October 2024

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Housing Supply Strategy

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4578820

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Today is the United Nation's World Habitat Day. There will be various activities around the world organised to examine the problems of rapid urbanisation and its impact on the environment and human poverty. In Northern Ireland, we still do not have a housing supply strategy, and, as reported by the Simon Community in June of this year, we have as many as 80,000 people who cannot access a place to call home. In Northern Ireland, we are not building enough social homes to meet the demand. The proportion of the Budget allocated for new housebuilding is simply not enough. Without a formal housing supply strategy that includes clear funding commitments in the Budget, the Assembly will continue to fail society by leaving thousands of people without a place to call home. I call on the Minister for Communities to bring forward his housing supply strategy as soon as possible and to stop the delays. We want to make sure that the next Budget is influenced by the housing supply strategy. A housing supply strategy must provide a clear pathway to achieve our climate change targets by removing oil as Northern Ireland's main home heating method, and that is in line with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors World Built Environment Forum. The strategy must set out clear cross-departmental actions to ensure that new homes are built to passive-house-type standards, and have a plan to improve existing homes through a national programme of sustainable transition, including an area-based approach that provides incentives for private owners and housing associations to bring their houses up to the energy performance certificate rating A standard and away from fossil fuels. Determined actions to deal with Northern Ireland's housing crisis will bring the opportunity to improve the desperate housing stress that up to 80,000 people face every day. Actions to deal with Northern Ireland's housing crisis have the opportunity to enable the introduction of energy efficient improvements that will help us meet our climate change targets and make life better for everyone. As a counterbalance, if we are committed to our environment, our environmental heritage should be protected and building more homes should not come at the expense of our natural environment. To this end, I ask the Minister for Communities to work with the Ministers of Finance and Infrastructure to develop planning regulations that ensure that any disturbance to the natural environment is minimised, and the Minister ensures that the historic environment division of DFC invests in native seed conservation, such as that carried out by True Harvest Seeds in Kilclief, to safeguard native species going forward.

432 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:13 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification