New Homes

Lord Londesborough Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

As I said to my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, we are in an economic situation that is not as favourable for housebuilding as it was, and therefore we have to work with Homes England, developers and local planning authorities to ensure that we give all the support we can, reinvigorate the housing market and get these houses built.

[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

My Lords, when house prices fall, as they are doing now, big building firms tend to sit on their balance sheets and play the waiting game. That is very bad news for new homes as big builders now have a 90% share of the UK market while SMEs have seen their share collapse from 40% to less than 10%. Does the Minister agree that this market domination is stifling competition and is bad news for the supply of new homes?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I absolutely do. We need to spend more time with our SME housebuilders. The levelling-up home building fund is providing £1.5 billion in development finance to SMEs and builders for exactly this reason: to support them to build more homes. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill is making changes to support SMEs, making the planning process much faster and more predictable for them so that they can stay in business and build more houses.