ROOF Blog

Fifty years ago, the average home cost £2,507 and one in seven had the loo outside. A half century on, the average home costs £162,085 but spare a thought for the two in every 1,000 households that still rely on an outside loo, according to research published by Halifax. The decade-by-decade data paints a picture of Britain today more divided than ever by regional house price differences. Halifax found that the region with the lowest prices in 1960 – Yorkshire and Humberside – remains the lowest, but said that every region in Britain has fallen further and further behind London. It said the difference was down to the rise in real earnings, which have increased more in Greater London than in any other region. However, incomes have failed to keep pace with rampant property prices everywhere. Halifax found that prices rose by 273 per cent in real terms between 1959 and 2009. Over the same period, the growth in real earnings was 169 per cent.

The true extent of the financial pain that will be felt by households and public services over the next few years has been laid bare by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Even those on half typical earnings will see their living standards suffer as a result of the Chancellor’s policies, the think-tank warns. 

To protect the ‘ringfenced’ areas of hospitals, schools and the police, there will have to be savage cuts to defence, housing, transport and higher education budgets.

Cuts of almost seven per cent a year, 20 per cent over three years, mark the severest squeeze since the Second World War, tougher than anything in the austerity years of the 1970s or early 1980s.

The IFS analysis of the Chancellor’s pre-Budget report also shows a £76bn ‘black hole’ in the public finances; that fixing it will cost every family £2,400 a year; and that only those on less than £14,000 will be better off as a result of the changes.