The construction industry has given a guarded response to the Government's housing White Paper, launched by communities secretary Sajid Javid "to fix the broken housing market".
Measures include ensuring local authorities abide by responsibilities to bring greater volumes of land for development forward more quickly and to assist SME builders.
There are also plans for a new Housing Delivery Test to ensure that all parties are playing their part in building the homes communities need. Closer coordination and transparency at planning stage between builders and local authorities to accurately predict actual build out rates could be extremely beneficial and would allow local authorities to allocate the number of sites that would actually meet their housing need.
There are also proposals to reduce the time required for builders to start work once a permission is granted whilst ensuring they do not deter investment or the number of permissions. However, any sensible measure should not have an adverse impact on builders.
Stewart Baseley, executive chairman of the Home Builders Federation, said: “The White Paper recognises that the private sector house building industry is key to addressing the chronic housing shortage we face and outlines steps to assist it deliver more homes. The industry is a major part of the solution and is committed to continued growth.
“Huge progress has been made in recent years in terms of increasing housing supply. If we are to build more homes and meet the country’s acute needs, all parties involved in housing supply must up their game.
“The industry is determined to meet the challenges laid down by government and help deliver more homes more quickly. We will look to work with government on the detail of the measures announced today to ensure they will lead to many more new homes being built in the coming years.
“Plans to speed up the planning process, bring forward more developable land and make Local Authorities abide by their responsibilities are key. If we are to build more homes, we need more land coming through the system more quickly. Measures that will allow SME builders to build more homes will increase the capacity of the industry and result in increases in overall supply.”
Chief Executive of The Housing & Finance Institute and former government housing adviser, Natalie Elphicke, described the set of proposals as a "a technically strong rather than a radical white paper".
The Housing & Finance Institute is leading a national housing infrastructure pilot in the South East area in this area so welcomes the strong focus for housing infrastructure.
"The White Paper is a missed opportunity to create a step change in innovative finance and modern tenures like rent and buy which support building at scale but also provide housing choice and housing ownership," she said. “The government is right to support the building of homes at greater densities and to bring in fairer protection for tenants. These are two very practical measures to help Londoners. But the Government needs to be careful not let London off the hook by imposing biggest housing targets on the South East and further straining infrastructure in those areas.
“It is simply wrong to imply that the Home Counties councils are not doing enough to support national housebuilding. Latest figures on registrations for new properties saw a 14 per cent increase in the South East but a 33 per cent drop in London. London’s poor performance is yet again dragging down national housing growth. Without London, the national performance was up 4 per cent. With London it is dragged down to 2 per cent less than the previous year.
“Councils in the South East may be left feeling muddled and confused about the Government’s White Paper. On the one hand, the government appears to have ruled out relaxing controls on green belt land. On the other hand, the threat of central government set housing targets could force the allocation of additional land for building, over and above the high targets for housing growth already in place. The imposition of much higher central housing targets on the South East to make up for the continuing housebuilding failures of London could be bad news for that region.”
Brian Berry, Chief Executive of the FMB, said both house builders and local authorities agree that the Government will not be able to build one million homes by 2020 unless council planning departments are properly funded.
“Stimulating greater output among smaller scale house builders will not only help us build thousands of additional homes, it will also help us deliver those homes more quickly," he continued. "The business model of an SME developer relies upon building out sites and then selling the properties as quickly as possible.
"The Government clearly recognises the importance of this model in meeting its housing target and is right to identify the decline of the SME house builder as a key factor behind the continued shortfall of new homes. The reforms to the country’s planning system, outlined in the White Paper, are important to this end – they place greater emphasis on using small undeveloped sites and further support one-off ‘windfall’ sites.
“Delivering more homes on small sites doesn’t just provide opportunities for SME builders but on average delivers homes more quickly than on large sites. This White Paper will result in ambitious new housing targets for councils which they will have to deliver against – these targets will not be met through an over-reliance on large developers and large sites. If local authorities fail to meet their targets they could lose control over their own planning policy and the threat of this should provide the impetus for councils to push more small sites through the system. It is in everyone’s interest to see SMEs play a far greater role in house building and small sites are key to this.”
