Lords urge govt to sort housebuilding plans

Britain is on the path to a housing crisis as confusion about planning rules and shortages of staff undermine government targets to build 300,000 homes a year. A House of Lords committee said a retreat from housebuilding by smaller companies must be tackled by ministers to reduce the shortage of homes.
In a report titled ‘Meeting Housing Demand’, the committee said, “Too many people currently live in expensive, unsuitable and poor-quality Gomes, and housing supply needs to be increased now to tackle the housing crisis.” Chair of the Lords’ built environment committee, Baroness Neville-Rolfe said, “The government’s ambitious target of 300,000 new homes a year will only be met if it takes action to remove the barriers for house builds, particularly for SMEs, which 35 years ago built 39 per cent of new homes but now build just 10 per cent.”
Housing Secretary Michael Gove is expected to set out the government’s plans to kickstart housebuilding after the industry battled through Brexit and a never-ending pandemic. Gove says he will encourage employment and housing in the regions as part of the government’s levelling-up agenda.
Uncertainty and delays to planning reforms have had a “chilling effect” on housebuilding and created uncertainty for housebuilders and planners, Neville-Rolfe said. She said 50 per cent of local authorities had adopted or updated their local plans in the last five years, leaving developers in the dark over what land was available for new construction.
“It was probably what surprised me most during our investigation. Not so much the shortages of bricklayers and skilled construction workers, which is acute and well known, but the lack of skills in planning after years of not training people,” she said.