Why we should concentrate efforts on improving the existing stock of homes in the UK - Jayne Dowle

Since he took over, Rishi Sunak, mindful of dissent, has rowed back on house building targets. Michael Gove, his Secretary of State for Housing, was forced to abandon the concrete figure of 300,000 in a climbdown in December; a 60-strong backbench rebellion threatened to halt the progress of his Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill through Parliament.

The official government line is now, “housing targets remain, but are a starting point, with new flexibilities to reflect local circumstances”.

Well, now the housebuilding industry is doing what neither Liz, nor Tory backbenchers, nor Rishi could manage. It’s scaling back itself.

January has begun with dire warnings from some of the biggest companies, including Barratt’s and Taylor Wimpey, that worsening economic circumstances mean they will be building fewer new homes than planned in 2023, and looking to make swingeing cuts, including, in Barratt’s case, a hiring freeze.

In construction, things are definitely not looking good when bricklayers can’t get a start.

The wider point is, however, that houses are not like other commodities - electric cars, for instance, also suffer a blow, as the cost spirals out of reach of ordinary mortals and electricity prices make running such a vehicle more expensive than a petrol or diesel model.

Houses are emotive. And the housebuilding industry represents one of the most powerful lobby groups in the UK, although their battles with government, at national and local level, are not publicised like the bitter struggles of rail workers and nurses.

In many ways, it’s an impenetrable world, dominated by private companies and seriously wealthy individuals. Construction’s richest man, according to the Sunday Times’ Rich List in 2022, is Derbyshire-born former plasterer John Bloor, the son of a coal miner, with an estimated fortune of £2.079bn thanks to his company, Bloor Homes.

Bloor’s wealth however, is only half that of Tory donor Sir Anthony Bamford, chief of the JCB construction equipment company, and paymaster for Boris and Carrie Johnson’s Cotswolds wedding party in July 2022. He’s worth, according to the Sunday Times, £4.32bn.

When you look at it as a chain, from the rich men at the top, to the first-time buyers at the bottom, and consider the financial struggles so many are suffering to afford even their first step on the ladder of home ownership, you can see why UK housebuilding is so riven with inequalities.

Rising mortgage rates are hitting the younger generation of mortgage holders hardest due to the rising cost of borrowing, finds a new study by property technology company, iPlace Global: 29 per cent of British homeowners aged 25 to 34 have looked into changing their mortgage deals as they struggle to keep up with payments.

The argument goes that the more houses we build, the cheaper they will be for people to buy. But everyone knows it doesn’t work like that.

As I said, houses are unlike any other commodity; building them is all about pushing for profit and so much is dependent on the location, local market conditions and pricing as high as possible to sell.

And yet with a growing population, we do need more homes.

So I’d argue that in straitened times, revolutionary thinking is called for. Politicians should forget the housebuilders and their profits for a while, and practise what they preach to the rest of us; make do and mend.

A brave Prime Minister would actually step back from all talk of housing targets this year, and instead, concentrate efforts on improving the existing stock of homes in the UK, including the hundreds of thousands of properties that lie empty.

The charity Action on Empty Homes believes that there are 238,000 long-term empty homes in England alone, left vacant perhaps because of the owner’s death, or they are second homes no longer in use, or have been simply abandoned.