Select committee: Built Environment Committee
Conclusion 92
1st Report - Meeting housing demand
Published 10 Jan 2022
Built Environment Committee Meeting the UK’s housing demand All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
A prevalent and concerning trend in the development of new homes has been the sharp decline in SMEs housebuilders: in 1988 SME builders constructed 39% of new homes; by 2020 this had dropped to 10%. 161 While the industry as a whole has grown in recent years, housing delivery has increasingly relied on a smaller number of large developers, as shown in Figure 9. 162 The number of SME housebuilders has approximately halved since 2007; many have been acquired by larger builders over the years or ceased operations. 163 When discussing this sharp decline, the Minister said: “we have to get those numbers back up.” 164 Figure 9: Output by size of housebuilder Source: Savills and LDS, A review of the availability of development sites for SME housebuilders in England and Wales (2021): https://ldsyoursite.com/savills-sme-housebuilders-report- demonstrates-huge-potential [accessed 16 December 2021]
From: Built Environment Committee, 1st Report - Meeting housing demand, 10 January 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 28 March 2022 (deadline 10 March 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government welcomes the Committee's report and says it is "taking action on a number of the issues identified", agreeing with some recommendations while disagreeing with others, including on home ownership schemes and the Apprenticeship Levy.
- It "disagrees with the report's assessment that homeownership schemes do not provide good value for money", citing independent evaluations and its own evaluation of Help to Buy.
- On older people's housing, it is launching a new taskforce "this year", chaired by the Minister for Housing, to look at better choice, quality and security of housing.
- It does "not intend to set out a proportion" of Affordable Homes Programme funding for social housing, though "around half" of the affordable homes are to be for social and affordable rent.
- On the Apprenticeship Levy it says it has "no plans to review" it. On planning fees it is "exploring options" to increase them, and on local plans it will make an announcement "in due course".