HOUSE building in the South will have to rise sharply above previous estimates to address the urgent need for extra accommodation, a Parliamentary committee has claimed.

MPs have warned the regional economy will be hurt by severe shortages of skilled labour and gridlock on the roads if many more new homes are not built in Hampshire than are currently planned.

The Government has already told Hampshire and the Isle of Wight to build a total of 101,300 new homes between 2006 and 2026 – an average of 5,065 a year.

‘Insufficient’ But a report published by the South East Regional Committee said even this level of house building would be “insufficient to satisfy the region’s need”. The committee called on ministers to prepare to hike targets further in the light of higher estimates of need from a housing advisory body.

The National Housing and Planning Advice Unit (NHPAU), in a report published last July, said the existing targets, set out in the South East Plan following several years of wrangling and consultation, were not high enough to bridge the “substantial and continuing mis-match between supply and demand in the southern part of the country”.

It said at least 38,000 new homes and up to 53,800 would be needed across the South East region each year over a 20-year period, representing an increase of between 16 per cent and 65 per cent on the current regional target of 32,700 a year.

If the recommended extra homes were distributed across the region in the same way as the existing targets, the number Hampshire and the Isle of Wight would be expected to build would rise from 5,065 to at least 5,875 per year and, based on upper estimates, to as many as 8,357 a year.

The lower figure of the range is the number of homes that would be needed to accommodate the projected increase in households, while the higher rate, according to the MPs’ report, would be needed to tackle housing waiting lists and to make homes more affordable to people on average incomes.

A spokesman for the developers’ group the Home Builders Federation said; “We completely agree. We have got a housing shortage across the country and particularly in the South East.

Clearly there’s a dramatic under supply so in the coming years we are going to have to ramp up production.”

Warning that rates of new housebuilding projects across the South East were running at about “50 per cent down” on what they were two or three years ago, the committee said the “dire” consequences of not meeting housing targets would include “constraints on economic development through shortages of skilled labour, increased traffic congestion caused by people travelling further to work and to access services, overcrowding, homelessness and impacts on physical and mental health”.