Labour’s election victory has ended 14 years of Conservative dominance. Brian Berry, CEO of the Federation of Master Builders (FMB), discusses the potential impact on the housing industry and whether Labour can deliver on their promises.
Labour’s general election win has changed the landscape of British politics, following 14 years of the Conservative Party being dominant in Westminster. With the majority Labour holds it should mean their agenda is implemented with little challenge. They have plenty of ambitious plans to keep the housing industry busy, but with such lofty ambitions, will they be able to deliver?
Labour’s big plans
Labour’s plan to deliver 1.5 million new homes over five years will be a tough goal, considering the country has failed to meet housing targets for many years, and sections of the market like SMEs are in steep decline. But, plans to reform the planning system should help to make it easier to build homes. Labour’s announcement to provide increased direct government funding for planning officers is good to see, however, the figures announced are a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed to rebalance planning teams that have been losing staff to the private sector.
The Labour Party has made brownfield sites a key tenant of their plans. This could be a bonus for SME house builders who tend to prefer to use smaller, brownfield sites. There is also the much talked about ‘grey belt’ which is what Labour is describing as the poor quality green belt land. There has been a scramble to understand what this term really means and for the moment it remains a Labour term, rather than having any legal meaning. Hopefully, Labour doesn’t get too distracted by this, as the so-called grey belt offers very few opportunities – less than 1% of the Green Belt – and that only makes up 13% of England’s land.
Labour also has plans to deliver new towns. These could unlock opportunities and a consistent line of work for my members, smaller, local house builders. The FMB has made clear to the new Housing Minister, Matthew Pennycook MP that any plans on new towns should consider SMEs. Much like large strategic sites, they should be broken down into smaller plots so that developments can have a diverse range of housing.
Where are the builders?
But what about skills? This topic could easily be an entire article, so I’ll be brief. The industry is in desperate need of new builders to deliver all these ambitious plans. But with apprenticeship numbers falling far short of the numbers required and high dropout rates, will the industry be ready to ramp up? At the current rate, the answer is no. Labour have announced the setting up of Skills England, so let’s see over the coming months what can be done to boost numbers.
The social housing dilemma
Social housing could be an important route forward for small, local house builders as it has the potential to provide a consistent pipeline of work from local authorities or social housing providers, with the use of smaller developers may be particularly needed in rural areas. Labour haven’t fixed a percentage to the number of social homes they would like, but pre-election announcements put it at 40%. The reality of the housing market has likely meant this number was omitted from the manifesto and no official percentage now exists.
However, the broken system surrounding Registered Providers (RPs) of social housing must be fixed. Too many smaller house builders struggle to find RPs to partner with, owing to the smaller sizes of their social housing numbers, which are economically unattractive to social housing providers. This means homes go unbuilt and people stay on housing waiting lists, especially in rural areas.
There is much to play for over the coming months and years – which is why it’s going to be an exciting but challenging time not just for our industry but for the new Government wanting to implement its new agenda.