A new inquiry studying housing demand will include looking at the part smaller builders can play in innovation and developing difficult sites.
The house of lords’ built environment committee will see how smaller builders can be encouraged back to the supply point.
Cross-party committee chair Baroness Neville-Rolfe told Housing Today: “You get some innovation and vibrancy and they do things that perhaps a bigger builder would not do. Historically there’s quite a lot of smaller builders who have fallen by the wayside.”
The National Federation of Builders, NFB, said smaller builders were more adept at responding quicker to building homes in the right places.
NFB housing and planning policy head Rico Wojtulewicz said: “They’re also more likely to embrace innovation and build better places. Their decline has been a major issue when producing solutions to solve the housing crisis and we should be doing everything we can to encourage their growth.”
Growing older population will shape housing
Baroness Neville-Rolfe pointed out that the number of households in England is projected to rise by 3.7m over the next 20 years.
“This increase will be unsustainable and damaging to society unless the corresponding need is met.”
She said meeting this demand was not just a question of numbers, but of balancing where and what kind of buildings people wanted to live in.
Leave a Comment