European housing ministers agree on the importance of planning and poverty issues
Affordability is the biggest housing issue across 27 European countries.

That was the conclusion of a groundbreaking study which also found that fuel poverty, urban planning and sustainability are key concerns.

The survey, published last week, was commissioned for the first meeting of European housing ministers in five years. The meeting included 12 states that are not yet members of the European Union but which have applications for membership under consideration.

Surprisingly, tenant participation in both management and housing design rated among the least important of 22 issues in the report. Encouraging social solidarity through local networks also fared poorly.

Only one issue brought sharp divergence between countries inside and outside the EU. The non-EU states said the impact of housing quality on the physical and mental health of residents was highly important, but the EU nations disagreed.

One speaker from Hungary, a candidate for EU membership, said 80% of housing across the 12 candidate states was substandard.

Conference secretary Hubert van Eyk said the research will provide invaluable data for closer analysis and that existing stock was the most important area for action. He said: "Only 1% is added to the stock every year. Dwellings yet to be built will constitute no more than around 15% of all houses in 2020.

"However, sustainable housing policies are still focused on newly built dwellings where they seem to be able to be applied more easily."

In a final communiqué from the meeting, the ministers agreed that housing is a core element in the fight against social exclusion. They also endorsed plans to ask national governments to set tough targets on reducing the numbers of people at risk from poverty and exclusion by 2010.

And they backed moves to set up a taskforce with the aim of developing statistical methods for researching homelessness across Europe.

UK housing minister Lord Rooker did not attend the conference, which was held in Belgium at the end of last month.

But the Department for Work and Pensions said the government is already committed to eradicating child poverty within a generation, and has specific targets for crime reduction.