Housebuilders

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Best, on this valuable debate today. He paints a harsh, or perhaps a rather sad, picture of the major housebuilders, in terms of their putting profit before people. We should remember that these firms—like many other people, I have had a few shares in them for many years—have done much to advance the construction industry in this country.

When I became a Peer in 1998, we had two Members of the House who each had a long history in the construction industry. One was a housebuilder—Frank, Lord Taylor—the other was Edwin, Lord McAlpine of Moffat, the grandson of the founder of Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons, although they are not housebuilders but a major construction company. It seems appropriate that Edwin’s grandson is taking part in this debate today.

A special memory for me is seeing these two charming elderly men chatting together and obviously enjoying it. I already knew Lord McAlpine. Lord Taylor told me that he had started his building work at the age of 16 in Blackpool. Not only did he see the opportunity to create homes during a severe shortage, but he learned how to build them. He persuaded his bank manager to loan him some £400 to start the enterprise and then sold a pair of properties for a 100% profit.

Taylor was a motivator who had the ability to inspire people with almost unequivocal loyalty. In the early 1930s, he persuaded his entire team to uproot and move south from Blackpool to Hayes in Middlesex. He bought a site which other builders had passed by because of the drainage difficulties. He solved those and went on to build 1,200 homes. By 1935, Taylor Woodrow had become a public company. In confronting these new challenges, Taylor maintained his basic values of hard graft and doing a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage. Although he had the ability to think on the grandest of scales, he kept his eyes on the small details —he would often check the roof of a house himself. He believed in teamwork, having no staff, only team members. Although knighted in 1974 and invested for services to the UK, he shunned personal acclaim, preferring to recognise his success as the product of a team effort—a team that now numbers around 8,500.

Taylor was one of the last of the old school of entrepreneurs, whose passion was focused not just on the business but on the people within that business. One of his tenets of management was to allow people to take responsibility young and give them the licence to make mistakes—but only once. He did not suffer fools gladly. He stood for good quality at a fair price and wanted everyone to know that was what the firm stood for.

Was it only in the past that it was possible to go from rags to riches? No. Today, Tony Pidgley has a parallel history—a real rags to riches story. Now boss of Berkeley, he was adopted at four and left school at 15, but has had similar success. From personal experience over the years, I know how good he has been at supporting various charitable causes.

My own interest in building dates back from the day when we redeveloped the garage behind the surgery at our little mews house. We were the first, but now the whole mews has now been completely redone, and ours is tiny compared to all the others that have added a floor on top or a basement below. The work was done by the small works department of Bovis Homes, and at that time many major builders had similar departments.

My other venture was in the 1980s, when I bought a central London house for the family to live in. We were shocked to find it suddenly split apart due to subsidence and we were forced to demolish and rebuild. These minor experiences make me appreciate the work of builders and the demands on their skills. Training has always been a big issue and I am glad it has been brought up today.