A leading UK economist has supported the government’s housebuilding proposals within the recent Spending Review but suggest the plans remain light on specifics.

Treasury Select Committee member and Labour MP Rachel Blake pointed out that London local authorities spend £4m per day on temporary accommodation.

In light of the £39bn announced in the Spending Review to fund new homes over 10 years, she asked to what extent this investment would be able to address the resources spend that London local authorities were spending on poor quality private rented homes.

Replying to the committee Institute for Government (IfG) chief economist Dr Gemma Tetlow said: “In terms of the Affordable Homes Programme, our sense is that this is a reasonable step up in affordable homes spending — around £4bn per year over the next 10 years. Our rough estimate is that this roughly doubles where we were before.”

But she added: “This maybe enables 30,000 extra houses per year – that is clearly sizeable but accounting for 10% of the new housing the government is aiming for over the next few years.”

Dr Petlow said the investment was welcome and would make a difference but one question that remained was the split between affordable versus social housing and also how the money would be distributed across the country, for instance, how much would be built around London versus other parts of the country.

However, she concluded: “It is a step in the right direction.”

One additional announcement in the Spending Review that Dr Petlow was keen to highlight as a positive step forward, was the Office of Value for Money confirming it was carrying out a cost efficiency report on short term accommodation. The report has not been published yet.

“It will be interesting to see what this (review) comes up with but doing the exercise is very welcome,” Dr Petlow said.