INDUSTRY NEWS 9
Figures show housebuilders are delivering on targets
Government figures have revealed that 217,350 homes were added to the housing stock in England in the last financial year, which, according to the HBF, indicates the industry is on track to beat the previously set one million homes by 2020 target. The housebuilding industry has now delivered a 74 per cent increase in supply in the past four years. With the number of planning permissions granted at the highest rate on record, increases look set to continue, said HBF.
Figures also showed 183,570 new build homes were built, up 12 per cent on last year and up 55 per cent in the past four years. As a result of planning reform, housebuilders were also seen to increase the number of conversions and changes of use completed to 17,751. By the end of March 2017, there were reportedly 577,690 more homes in England than there were three years ago.
The industry is now calling on Government to provide certainty on the future of Help to Buy post-2021; remove barriers for SMEs, start-ups and specialist retirement builders; and to push forward proposals in the White Paper to improve the planning system. Stewart Baseley, executive chairman of the Home Builders Federation, commented on the figures: “The statistics illustrate the huge progress being made, and the rapid rate at which builders have responded to positive measures from Government to deliver more and more new homes. It is no coincidence that, since the reform of the planning system in 2012 and the introduction of the phenomenally successful Help to Buy scheme in 2013, housing supply has increased by a massive 74 per cent.
“The challenge now is to expand the number of housing suppliers delivering new homes. Government needs to help create the conditions for more specialist developers and smaller firms to invest and grow their output, while continuing
THE HOUSEBUILDING INDUSTRY HAS NOW DELIVERED A 74 PER CENT INCREASE IN SUPPLY IN THE PAST FOUR YEARS
with the positive environment that has seen larger developers drive increases in supply. Moving forward, the housebuilding industry will play a key role in building a new Britain and driving our post-Brexit economy.”
PM pledges personal housebuilding mission
Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged that it is her personal “mission” to increase the pace and capacity of UK housebuilding. She criticised the slow pace of house- building in the past: “For decades we have not been building enough homes, nor have we been building them quickly enough, and we have seen prices rise. “The number of new homes being delivered each year has been increasing since 2010, but there is more we can do.” May pressed the country to “get back into the business of building the good quality new homes for people who need them most,” making it her “mission to build the homes the country needs and take personal charge of the Government’s response.” While admitting it would be “a long journey,” the PM says she is “determined to build a Britain for the future.”
Over 40,000 new homes could be built on London’s roofs
As many as 41,000 new homes could be built on the rooftops of central London property, without altering the skyline. According to new research from Knight
Frank, using the latest geospatial mapping software, more than 28m ft2
of potential
additional residential floor area could be developed, with this “airspace” having a potential value of £51bn. Stimulated in part by the 2017 Housing White Paper, the research project aimed to identify the extent of the Government’s pledge to seek out opportunities for higher-density housing in urban locations, particularly “where buildings can be extended upwards by using the ‘airspace’ above them.” In response, Knight Frank has developed ‘Skyward’ – a method to systematically and effectively analyse the potential of each building.
Skyward analyses 3D spatial data from
the Ordnance Survey, cross referencing Land Registry data to assess ownerships and Historic England data to filter out listed buildings.
© Frederic Legrand
Some 23,000 buildings could be suitable for rooftop development in Zones 1 and 2, saud the firm, with the volume of the unused plots across the same area being equivalent to eight Burj Khalifa towers (830 metres high), but “crucially without the same impact on London’s skyline”. The mapping product initially defines each contiguous block by its maximum height, then excludes unsuitable buildings (listed buildings and those where historic airspace rights are recorded by Land Registry), before extruding all remaining buildings up to the maximum height. Only those that can be extended by a minimum of 3 metres are deemed to be potential Skyward developments. Ian McGuinness, head of Geospatial at Knight Frank, commented: “Using 3D mapping technology, the findings of this analysis can be related to other geographies easily, including to client land ownership portfolios. We can now say where the opportunities are, how much value they unlock, and which land owners are best placed to drive this transformation.”
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