Sajid Javid has hit the ground running since his appointment as secretary of state for communities and local government. He’s vowed to tackle the big housing developers about their perceived inability to deliver new homes – despite there being hundreds of thousands of extant residential planning permissions that are just waiting to get going. It’s the latest act in the war of words between policy-makers and the construction industry.
The unspoken narrative between the two parties sees the government implying that major developers are limiting the supply to artificially inflate prices. At the same time, the House Builders’ Federation (HBF) pleads there’s no land banking taking place and also that there’s no point creating 1,000s more homes if no one wants to buy them. Mr Javid has even threatened to disrupt the business models of the Big 10 construction companies, who currently erect 80% of all new dwellings in the UK.
The National Custom and Self Build Association’s (NaCSBA) ethos supports the view that people would rather not buy what’s on offer from mainstream companies. The HBF’s figures show that 67% of the UK public would be unlikely to or wouldn't purchase a new volume-built property. They're often seen as small, built to a price and typically located in overcrowded, uninspiring estates. The demand for small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) developers to re-enter the market to deliver a more desirable product is obvious, as is the need to promote more self and custom build. In some ways, the revival of SMEs is being met by the rise in custom build enablers who are essentially developers interested in delivering what the customer wants.