Following the Autumn Budget last week, there has been a lot of comment on the chancellor’s decisions around housing.
Rishi Sunak addressed the ongoing unsafe cladding issue with a 4% levy on property developers with profits over £25 million, whilst £11.5 billion is to be spent on 180,000 new affordable homes.
Hugh Gibbs, co-founder of SearchLand, made it clear that the UK government isn’t going far enough to address the housing crisis in the UK.
“This country doesn’t have enough homes. The UK’s affordability crisis has been building for decades and there is an urgent need to deliver more high-quality affordable housing, but the pace of construction is failing to meet demand.”
“As such, the Chancellor’s funding pledge to encourage brownfield residential redevelopment across over 100 areas is a positive step in the right direction, but there needs to be a concerted effort from the government to ensure the homes are fit for purpose and affordable for those in need.
“While we welcome the Chancellor’s commitment to increase housebuilding, what’s needed now, more than ever, is a seismic shift in our outdated and ineffective planning system, which continues to be a threat to housebuilders’ ability to deliver new homes.”
“A £65 million pledge to help digitise the planning system might seem like a positive step, but given the scale and complexity of the task, as well as this Government’s track record with digitisation projects, is enough emphasis being placed on this issue given its immense importance?” he added.
