Housebuilders need tough love — and fresh thinking
Who would be a big homebuilder? Interest rates are rising, house prices are headed south and — worst of all — industry bête noire Michael Gove is back at the horribly named Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
Still, the industry body’s latest report bemoaning an “influx of new taxes, levies, regulations and policies” is crass for a sector that has reaped the benefits from repeated government attempts to stimulate buyer demand over the past decade. More than half the £4.5bn in annual developer costs estimated by the Home Builders Federation comes from the Future Homes Standard, overdue requirements on low-carbon heating and energy efficiency and other measures related to the energy transition.
Gove, in his first spell in the job, made clear that the government’s stretching annual target of 300,000 net additional homes in England by the mid-2020s wouldn’t stand in the way of shaking down the sector for money to fix the cladding crisis (another chunk of the HBF’s rising policy costs). It wasn’t entirely fair: the blame there extends well beyond the volume housebuilders to material manufacturers and policymakers themselves. But the principle of not letting an arbitrary target (that he just reaffirmed) block actually getting something done was the right one. Let’s hope it still applies.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Helen Thomas
