16 THE INDUSTRY ADVOCATE
WHAT’S ON BORIS’ TO-DO LIST?
Brian Berry is the chief executive of the Federation of Master Builders
Brian Berry of the Federation of Master Builders (FMB), discusses what he believes the top priorities should be for the new PM Boris Johnson when it comes to the housebuilding agenda.
W
hile the focus in Downing Street is firmly on getting ready to leave the European Union on 31 October, deal or no deal, the new Prime Minister’s domestic policy agenda has yet to be fully set out. So, what should Boris’ top priorities be from a Federation of Master Builders (FMB) perspective?
First, he needs to take forward Theresa
May’s passion for increasing the supply of new homes. We are still simply not building enough new houses. The 300,000 new dwellings a year target should remain, and Boris should ensure that this target is achievable, by breaking down all the potential barriers to achieving this from planning reform to releasing more public land.
One clear way to ramp up supply would be to encourage the diversification of the housing market, by empowering small housebuilders.
Theresa May’s Government made some welcome changes to help this part of the market, indeed she even dedicated a whole section to the Housing White Paper to this very topic. While this was a good start, there is still much more work to do to get the numbers of new homes built by Small and Medium Sized housebuilders back to what it was in the 1980s. Secondly, to ensure capacity in the housebuilding industry, there will need to be a continued supply of skilled workers, particularly if we start building 300,000 new homes a year. However, skill shortages continue to plague the industry. Our most recent State of Trade Survey for Q2 2019 found that 60 per cent of SME construction firms are struggling to hire bricklayers, just over half (54 per cent) couldn’t find a carpenter, and 40 per cent found finding a
THERE IS STILL MUCH MORE WORK TO DO TO GET THE NUMBERS OF NEW HOMES BUILT BACK TO WHAT IT WAS
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