Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to use the Home Building Fund and land owned by Homes England to diversify the house building sector and support micro and small to medium-sized house builders.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
Continuing to build the homes the country needs is a priority for the Government and we recognise the important role that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play in delivering new homes. We have been supporting the sector through various measures to boost confidence and retain capacity. £2.5 billion of the £4.5 billion Home Building Fund is targeted at SME builders and innovators and helps viable development schemes progress. The Home Building Fund encourages greater innovation, improves market resilience and diversifies housing delivery by enabling SMEs to increase their output.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to support SME diversification into the off-site manufacturing sector for the construction of new build homes.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Government recognises that building more homes needs a modern home building industry, with greater capacity to deliver. We are therefore keen to see all house builders, including Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs), embrace innovation and take advantage of new technologies to build good-quality homes more quickly and offer higher-energy efficiency to buyers.
We continue to improve access to finance for small and medium-sized builders, to help them deliver more homes including through diversifying and using offsite construction methods to build new homes.
We are providing financial support through the Home Building Fund which provides short term and long term loan finance to build the homes this country needs. At Autumn budget 2017, the successful Home Building Fund was increased by £1.5 billion to a total of £2.5 billion for investment in SMEs, custom builders and builders using modern methods of construction who cannot easily access finance. This funding will deliver at least 52,000 homes by 2022/23 and 94 per cent of contracted spend to date has been invested in SMEs.
In addition, Government announced up to £1 billion guarantee scheme at Autumn budget 2018. This will be available to lenders to provide new finance to SMEs. The guarantee scheme will be launched in early 2019/20.