Housebuilders’ Outlook for 2016: Will all housebuilders really benefit from the UK government’s new commitment to build affordable homes?

The government’s new policy to enable all housebuilders to access publically owned sites is certainly a positive step in the right direction. We will watch with interest to see how it plays out in practice.

However, as we constantly hear from our housebuilder clients, the planning process is still the single biggest business barrier. The larger building organisations are more able to cope with the funding and resourcing the drawn out process, but this is what really hurts the smaller, independent, unlisted businesses. If the government really wants to help those companies then a shake-up of the planning process would be a real business improver.

This was the main sentiment of the discussion at the Goodman Jones property reception in November when Liz Peace came to share some of her thoughts on the key issues for the sector.

Thoughts on the night, from Liz Peace, who was the CEO of the British Property Federation from 2002 to 2014 and is now involved in property, politics and the built environment, included:

1. If we want private sector house builders to build more, then they need to do it where there is market demand. You cannot buck the market!!!
2. And that is going to mean building where so far we have found it unpalatable to do - either upwards or outwards. Upwards – allowing an extra two stories in cities, and outwards for stifled cities to expand into selected Green Belt.
3. We have to crack the affordability issue – and that means either more council houses or social housing stock. So we need to review the issues facing the Registered Social Landlords.
4. More rigorously impose affordable housing targets – if that becomes an undisputed feature of any house building market then land prices will adjust automatically – in other words the market will take care of it.
5. We should use public sector land – but use it more creatively. What happened to Mr Prescott’s £60k house? – keeping the freehold, just selling the building, like we do in flats