The Labour party’s target of at least 100,000 publicly funded social homes a year would help the country get closer to the required 240,000 new homes a year that are needed in England alone (‘Labour mulls massive public housebuilding drive’).
The historic figures leave no room for doubt - the only times we’ve achieved sufficient levels of housebuilding have been when local authorities were empowered to invest in new homes on a significant scale.
However, it’s crucial Labour’s housing policies recognise that smaller developers will be vital in delivering the volume of new housing needed, and that they include practical ways to boost SME capacity.
Alongside the decline in significant levels of publicly funded housebuilding programmes since the 1980s, we’ve also seen a decline in small, local housebuilders. In the late 1980s, SME housebuilders built two-thirds of all new homes, but now they build between a quarter and one-third. It’s local builders that train the vast majority of construction apprentices. Local firms plough money back into the local economy and are able to provide consumers with real choice when it comes to new homes. Empowering small housebuilders would therefore not only help to achieve our housing targets; it would also provide numerous benefits to local communities up and down the country.
The Federation of Master Builders would stress that Labour’s proposal to lift the borrowing cap on local authorities is a sensible one - if councils are allowed to borrow against their assets and invest in housebuilding, it would empower them to once again launch significant local housebuilding programmes and help solve our ever-worsening housing crisis. We look forward to inputting to the newly announced Redfern Review of housing so we can help the Labour party develop sensible solutions to the housing crisis.
Brian Berry, chief executive, Federation of Master Builders
No comments yet