New Housing Supply

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) for securing this debate on such a pressing and important topic, which I have been involved with, in one way or another, for 20 years in elected office. I was pleased to lead a Westminster Hall debate on the related topic of the future for SME house builders just the other week, and today’s debate provides a welcome opportunity to hammer home some of the points I made then.

As a Conservative, the idea of the UK as a property-owning democracy is one about which I feel very strongly, and it worries me deeply that, for many younger people, home ownership is increasingly out of reach. Unsurprisingly, given my chairmanship of the all-party parliamentary group for SME house builders, I have a strongly held view that the sector can play an important role in helping to address the dual problems of housing accessibility and affordability across the UK.

The Home Builders Federation reports that, in 2020, the SME house building sector delivered about 22,000 homes. To put that in context, according to the Federation of Master Builders, SME builders could deliver 65,000 homes by 2025, compared with 12,000 in 2021, given the right conditions.

For those who are not aware of how vital the SME sector is to housing delivery, let me explain. SME developers typically carry out smaller developments built on trickier sites, and the SME sector tends to go where volume house builders cannot. As well as this, they often face less vocal opposition, as they deliver brownfield housing up and down the country, instead of the large-scale developments that often do not have the infrastructure to go along with them and which are responsible for so much so-called nimbyism. The sector delivered 39% of all homes built in England in the late 1980s yet, 40 years later, it barely manages 10% of our annual housing completions.

The rising cost of materials is causing difficulties for developers across the board, which is why I welcome initiatives such as the one developed by Travis Perkins, based in my Northampton South constituency, that enables SME house builders to access building supplies and materials directly without facing lengthy pre-approval checks. Another issue for SME house builders is access to finance, on which my APPG is soon to deliver a report. That includes difficulties in the Land Registry process for recording changes of property ownership. Labour shortages are another issue, as labour is crucial to the whole process.

[Kit Malthouse]

It is extremely important to recognise that small house builders, which were largely wiped out in the 2007-08 crash, have not re-emerged. Does my hon. Friend think the Government should look at the generation of new house builders—in the ’70s we had Lawrie Barratt and the chap behind Redrow, these big house builders—in the same way that they are looking at the generation of new scientists and new companies that promote science and technology? They have a strategy and funding all of their own, but I have yet to see anything that would stimulate new house building companies for the future. Does he agree that is something the Government should look at?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Lewer]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point, and the APPG produced a report in which we suggested a Homes England for SME house builders to try to address those points.

The planning system has already been touched on in this debate, and I say it again for the record that removing binding national housing targets from our house building system was a mistake. When the history of this Government is written, that mistake will loom larger than it already does. A different way was available and that was, if not a zonal planning system reset, some way towards that, as referenced by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western). This Administration are probably out of time for anything so radical, but other options exist.

I have come to understand that the issue of planning also relates to planning officer case load. As one town planner said to me, although a 20-unit brownfield development built by an SME is likely to require less work than a 400-unit greenfield development built by a volume house builder, it will not require 20 times less work. SME house builders are therefore disadvantaged in the planning process. Indeed, the explosion of process is a speech in itself. We have an entire sector that can help, but it is blocked in so many ways.

In his opening speech, my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden touched on migration in detail. Eight million—it is on us as national politicians, whether or not we supported that unsustainable level of migration. I did not, but it does not matter. A national solution of greatly increased house building is absolutely essential.

Ideas are flowing. My right hon. Friend made insightful and challenging points in favour of garden towns and cities. Then there are the ideas in the Bacon review, an impressive and important piece of work led by my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) and commissioned by the Government, and now in need of implementation. It is about self-commissioning, not just self-build. My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) outlined ideas on building up, adding storeys, not high rises, about which I was recently interviewed on Times Radio. There is also the work of my hon. Friends the Members for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) and for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) and our fellow members of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, as I wish it were still called.

It may be something of a cliché to say that many of our people will only truly believe in capitalism if they have a piece of capital of their own but, as Terry Pratchett once wrote:

“The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.”