Oxford’s homes are more unaffordable than ever
Oxford’s homes are more unaffordable than ever
Spiralling housing costs has made living in the city almost impossible for staff at one of the city’s largest employers
In the U.K home ownership is seen as a bulwark against financial insecurity. Building wealth with a mortgage while making sure there was a roof over you and your family. It was this idea that helped keep politicians like Margaret Thatcher in power, ensuring people could secure an affordable mortgage was an essential vote winner.
This promise of the past is becoming ever more elusive for many in the U.K. The ratio of house prices to earnings continues to rise while mortgage rates have in recent years seen a significant spike. Oxfordshire is somewhere which has not been able to escape this trend, with Oxford being one of the most expensive cities in the UK to buy a home.
As of 2022 the median house price to earnings ratio for England and Wales sat at 8.16. This figure stood at 10.49 for Oxfordshire as a whole and a staggering 12.15 for Oxford City. This ratio has grown over 53% for Oxfordshire and over 40% for Oxford from 2002 to 2022. To put these numbers in perspective, lenders will typically only let you borrow between 4.5 and 5 times your salary for a mortgage.
Many homeowners count their blessings they got on the property ladder before the situation got to how it is today. That is the feeling of Stuart Whigham, a lecturer at Oxford Brookes University and secretary of the University’s UCU (University and College Union) Branch.
We bought back in 2012 and it was just after the housing market crashed, a couple of years after that, and I think we were able to buy a good time when there wasn't much credit on the market. Since then, the house prices and rents in Oxford have just gotten astronomical.
Stuart said that since 2012 the value of his house in Oxford has gone up around 70-80%, but as everywhere else has risen in price, moving for him and his family is not really an option. For many looking to get on the housing market nowadays, Oxford has become out of reach.
As time progresses all my friends who lived in Oxford have moved away from Oxford, even if they are working in the vicinity. So people move to Wheatley, Witney, Kennington, Kidlington, some of the towns surrounding the area because they were significantly more affordable than Oxford was.
This process of people searching for homes in surrounding Oxfordshire has driven up prices there too. Another ratio used to analyse affordability is the ratio between the lower quarter of house prices relative to the lower quarter of earnings. It represents a better indicator of the prices of ‘affordable’ homes. For one of the surrounding Oxfordshire districts, Cherwell, this ratio has gone up a remarkable 83% from 2002 to 2022, now sitting at 10.87.
With affordability of housing becoming a greater challenge for Stuart’s colleagues at Oxford Brookes, many are having to commute further and further distances to ensure affordable rents and mortgages. There have been some unexpected consequences due to this change.
In terms of staff morale, staff connectedness, not just within the Union but just generally with colleagues, it has really made it more of an atomised working situation because people can’t really be on campus together, can’t socialise together and I think that has an impact on staff wellbeing and staff mental health.
The University’s branch of the UCU, of which Stuart is Secretary, has been campaigning on a number of approaches to tackle cost-of-living pressures for their members.
Alongside their sister union, Unison, they have been successful in campaigning to bring the ‘Oxford Living Wage’ to campus, lifting the minimum wage at the University to account for Oxford’s unique cost-of-living pressures. They have had less success in campaigning for an ‘Oxford uplift’ throughout the whole pay-scale of the University.
In London you have got even higher property costs, rental costs but the salaries have got an uplift. We have expressed to the University that people are being priced out of Oxford and being able to work at Oxford Brookes because the salaries here are the same as the rest of the country.
Another challenge is as more and more staff are commuting by car, parking has become a greater challenge. The University is closing two of its campuses in the next few years which acted as de facto park and rides for many of its staff.
We're going to be in a situation where we had about 1200 parking spaces down to around 400, 500 parking spaces. Combining that with the issues of LTNs on traffic, a still not sufficient amount of park and ride transport offers, means that staff are really having trouble getting into campus and parking.
Some staff members are coming in as early as 6.30am just to find a parking space, but for those with caregiving responsibilities doing this is an impossibility. Improving this situation for their members is another priority for the University’s UCU Branch.
Any construction of new parking spaces at the remaining Brookes campuses will be burdened by Oxfordshire County Council’s introduction of a Workplace Parking Levy. This is a charge for employers who allow their staff to park at their premises, which if approved will be implemented from 2027.
Mini, another one of the city’s largest employers, has received an exemption from this Levy as it sits outside the city’s ring road, but there is no indication that Oxford Brookes would benefit from any such exemption.
Easing cost-of-living pressures is not entirely in the control of Oxford Brookes University. Despite this, there are still a number of issues they could begin to approach, by reflecting on their staff’s wage packets as well as transport challenges. The University may find staff recruitment difficult in the future if they do nothing amidst this worsening picture of affordability.