UK needs a new national deal on housing – John Healey MP
Federation of Master Builders
Former housing minister John Healey MP called for a “new national deal” in the construction sector to achieve the level of house building required in the UK.
“Jeremy Corbyn is wrong.”
These were among the first words uttered by the Labour leader's former housing minister as he stood up in a conference fringe on Monday afternoon.
John Healey, a former shadow frontbencher, said Jeremy Corbyn's assertion that 200,000 houses per year needed to be built is simply wrong.
“He says we should be looking to build 200,000 houses per year. We actually need to be building more like 300,000 per year.”
The last time this rate of house building was being achieved was back in 1969, he explained, and this was largely achieved through council housing.
He praised the way Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had been pushing housing further up the agenda, and called for a renewed focus on the subject.
“We are looking for a new national deal with the private sector and housing associations” he said, as the private sector was unlikely to ever produce the level of house building required.
Over David Cameron’s premiership, fewer new homes were built than under any other prime minister since the 1920s, Mr Healey said, and homelessness has nearly doubled in those six years.
Public concern on the matter is now at a level where serious action can be taken, he added. This momentum had to be utilised: “We have to have radical ideas that people can believe in.”
The former minister accepted that the last Labour government had not built enough homes themselves, but stressed the £22bn of investment that it had put into the sector during Labour’s time in power.
Chief Executive of the Federation of Master Builders, Brian Berry, explained that over the past 20 years SME house builders had been squeezed out of the market. Having surveyed the organisation’s members, Berry reported that access to land, access to finance, the growing skills crisis in the UK, Brexit and the existing building stock all featured prominently in their concerns and barriers to increased house building.
“As important as ‘quantity’, it’s important that the ‘quality’ of new homes remains”, stressed the NHBC’s Lewis Sidnick, explaining that around 80% of new homes currently being built were within NHBC standards.
He emphasised the need to focus on closing the skills gap in the industry and getting smaller builders enter the sector.
The Home Builders Federation’s John Slaughter echoed concerns around skills and apprenticeships in the industry, and pointed to the Home Building Skills Partnership scheme run by the HBF.
“In the big picture, we need to get more players on the pitch,” he stated, referring specifically to the need to get more SMEs active in the industry.
A member of the audience raised the issue of how to get more young women to take up the apprenticeships so badly needed in the sector, and Berry agreed with her point, noting that currently less than 1% of people in the construction industry were female.
He noted the issue of having adequate and appropriate housing for older people, and highlighted the link between housing and social care in the UK, which he argued was rarely highlighted in the way that it should be.
Healey echoed this, saying his experience had been that few if any meetings took place between teams creating housing policy and those working on social care.
Slaughter agreed, noting how improving the supply of housing to older people would actually ease wider housing issues.
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