House Builders Association says: SMES are needed to build 800 homes each day
National Federation of Builders
House Builders Association says that we must look at barriers to SME involvement in home building to help ease shortages.
Following the publication of a newly published report which highlighted what problems SMEs face in the UK housing crisis, the House Builder’s Association agrees with the findings.
For the past ten years, the HBA has been highlighting the lack of support for SMES to build new and more affordable homes. The HBA believes in order to build more houses, we must look more closely at the barriers to SME involvement and to the contribution that they can make.
Rico Wojtulewicz, policy advisor at the HBA stated “SME house builders have a unique ability to organically develop local communities without straining infrastructure. The HBA continues to call on the government to do more in facilitating the participation of SME house builders, by helping them overcome the numerous financial, planning and regulatory obstacles in their path.”
The number of SME builders has dramatically declined over the last 30 years. Just 27 per cent of new homes today are built by small company’s, compared to 58 per cent in 1977.
Lack of land, finance and planning resources are a major setback in achieving the Government’s housing targets, making it nearly impossible for SMEs to help contribute and meet the proposed demand of building over 800 homes each day to tackle the housing crisis. The vast majority of the increase has come from larger builders however, the private sector builds market homes in order to make a profit and volume house builders are already operating at full capacity.
The HBA believes that, in order to build more homes, we need to look more closely at the barriers to SME involvement and the huge contribution they can make. There is an incredible opportunity for SME house builders to provide the additional number of affordable homes we need to build. The HBA hopes the government does not miss this opportunity when it publishes its white paper imminently.
