The Home Builders Federation (HBF) has outlined new plans for sustainable housing…

Responding to the call for evidence from the Callcutt Review of Housebuilding, HBF has outlined six areas which it believes are priority conditions for the industry to be able meet the demand for new homes:

• An adequate supply of land with implementable planning permission
• Adequate infrastructure
• The ability to build homes people want to buy
• Competitive returns for shareholders
• Residual land values that bring forward land for housing development
• A reduction in the complexity and cost of regulation

Whilst issues such as skills, construction methods, materials and finance are unlikely to present insurmountable barriers because they are largely within the control of the home building industry and its suppliers, the HBF is calling for the Government to ensure that policy and regulation do not create barriers to achieving the housing target or prevent new entrants from coming into the market.

Complexity of cost and regulation

The escalating cost impact on land values is already constraining housing output, even before the zero-carbon target or a proposed Planning-gain Supplement is factored into the equation.

A report for English Partnerships put the cost of achieving Code Level 5 at £26,000 to £36,000 per ‘traditional’ dwelling, a land cost of £1.0-1.4 million per hectare at current densities. Zero-carbon homes, at Code Level 6, will cost even more.

Commenting on HBF’s submission, HBF Executive Chairman, Stewart Baseley, said:

“The industry stands united with the Government in its aspiration to build 200,000 sustainable new homes per annum by 2016. There is certainly no significant impediment on the industry side to achieving this target.

The success or failure of building the sustainable homes that Britain needs hinges on having a sufficient and steady supply of developable land with implementable planning permissions. At a time when the amount of land developed annually has actually declined by 10 per cent in recent years, it is difficult to overstate this point”.