George Osborne’s vison for 400,000 new affordable homes could be scuppered by a shortage of skilled workers, warns the construction industry trade body.
According to the Federation of Master Builders, housing developments are already starting to stall because the cost of hiring skilled tradespeople is threatening to make some sites unviable.
“Unless we see a massive uplift in apprenticeship training in our industry, there won’t be enough pairs of hands to deliver more housing on this scale. That’s why we’re keen for the government to tread carefully when applying the new proposed apprenticeship levy to the construction industry,” said chief executive Brian Berry.
As part of a drive to help first-time buyers on to the property ladder, the government has said it will invest £7 billion to build 400,000 homes.
In his Autumn Statement on Wednesday, Osborne pledged to build 200,000 starter homes with 20% discounts for under-40s, 135,000 shared ownership homes, 10,000 rent-to-buy homes and 8,000 specialist properties for the elderly and disabled.
“The Chancellor clearly recognises that the crisis of home ownership is inextricably linked to a crisis in house building. We therefore hope that in order to address both, the government will do everything it can to increase house building capacity. SME developers will have an important role to play in delivering the smaller scale sites across the country,” said Berry.
“The last time we built in excess of 200,000 homes in one year was in the late 1980s when two-thirds of all homes were built by small developers. SME house builders now only build little over one quarter of all new homes which points to another serious capacity issue – we need more small house builders to enter the market and also for SME house builders to crank up their delivery of new homes in order to build the Chancellor’s 400,000 new affordable homes,” he added.
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