FMB questions Prime Minister’s housing pledge

David Cameron’s pledge to build 100,000 new homes for young first time buyers has come under scrutiny from the Federation of Master Builders (FMB), questioning who will build them.
Responding to the Prime Minister’s speech at the Conservative Party Conference last week, the FMB backed the Party’s pledge but indicated the target of 100,000 new homes is still too few and should be closer to 240,000 new homes every year.

Brian Berry Chief Executive of the FMB, said: “Critically it is not clear how these new homes for first time buyers will be delivered. What we need to be seeing is more of a drive to support local house building companies to build the homes in the places that local people want to live. Unfortunately, the number of local house builders has declined rapidly over the last twenty years, with the result that just 27% of all new homes are built by local house building companies.”

“The Prime Minister’s commitment to new housing needs to be supported by a range of delivery measures to help local house builders compete in the market. Improved access to finance and the availability of more smaller parcels of land for development would do much to help local house builders, and so help create the communities that housing alone cannot deliver.”