4 INDUSTRY NEWS
FROM THE EDITOR
Jack Wooler
The sector has a lot on its plate. With skills shortages, supply issues and – rightly, of course – ever tightening regulations and standards, the challenges in meeting the country’s housing demand have rarely been more stark.
While politicians bandy around housing targets as though homes spring out of thin air, arguing over sound-bites rather than offering real help for local builders, the sector is struggling to maintain business as usual.
Perhaps an illusion of a happy sector has been in part upheld by its amazing achievements in the wake of the pandemic. The NHBC reported that new home registrations in the UK during Q3 of this year reached 44,729, reportedly the highest third quarter fi gures since , and overnment data showed a net , units were added to the housing stock in England in , a rise of on last year.
Despite this brief post-Covid boom however, the cost of living crisis and recession are leading to predictions of a signifi cant slowdown, overshadowing any gains, as buyers become more cautious and funds more sparse.
This will exacerbate the already clear lack of housing, but, ignoring the diffi culties the sector is already experiencing in meeting this demand, the overnment actually appears to be working against them in reducing targets – with a growing number of MPs calling for amendments to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill in the hopes of scrapping the already-low housing targets, as well as the requirement for councils to deliver a fi ve-year supply of housing land.
nce a manifesto pledge, the overnment’s often contentious , homes per year target has now been pulled by Housing ecretary ichael ove, in the upcoming Levelling Up Bill. Its numerous critics, including many Tory MPs, targeted issues from the byelection-losing ‘mutant algorithm’ used to calculate housing need, to Liz Truss claim of “Stalinist housing targets.”
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While NIMBY homeowners can dominate the conversation here, whether rightly or wrongly worrying about where the homes are placed, continuing to fall behind housing targets – let alone scrapping them altogether – could have disastrous consequences for future generations, with home ownership likely to be a thing of the past for many.
Some were championing the need to increase output above all else, and maintain the , target. Former housing secretary aid avid was one senior fi gure to push back at the idea of scrapping of the specifi c number, saying it would be a “colossal failure of leadership.” Similarly, Robert Colvile, director of the C think tank said the move would be selfi sh and wicked, believing the cuts could cut the number of homes being built by -.
Either way, though, it appears that those who will actually construct these homes are generally being considered in the discussion. In focusing on where these houses are built, the overnment seems to be largely ignoring how they will be built, and by who. If housebuilders and developers of all stripes do not have access to the right land, and the right skills and materials, output cannot, and will not, rise.
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05/12/2022 13:23
If nothing else however, housebuilders can still take solace in the fact that, while this continues, demand will in the short-term at least continue to wildly outstrip supply, and their products will become ever more valuable and desirable to keep up with the expense of wading through crisis after crisis, standard after standard. What happens if house prices begin to fall dramatically in a deep recession, is another question.
It is Es who can’t afford a seat at the shrinking table who’ll be left hungry. Jack Wooler, deputy editor
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