The housebuilding industry is calling on lenders to offer mortgages at more favourable rates for those buying new homes where energy bills are less than half that of existing properties. The Home Builders Federation Watt a Save report reveals owners of new homes will save an average of £135 on running costs under Ofgem’s new price cap. HBF managing director Neil Jefferson said: “As mortgage affordability gets tougher, rental costs increase and the country’s need for homes grows increasingly desperate, [...]

The building industry says the sector is facing a retirement cliff with one in five builders aged over 50 and wants the government to improve training to avoid a housebuilding slump. The Homebuilder Federation, HBF’s latest workforce census revealed just one in four students gained employment after completing a full-time construction course. The trade body said this showed the UK education system was failing to deliver ‘practical and employable’ skills. HBF executive chairman Stewart Baseley said: “As the country’s demand [...]

Councils will struggle to set viable rates for developing brownfield and urban sites under the new infrastructure levy, warn landowners. The British Property Federation, BPF, argues that the levy is not site-specific and that this will have a negative impact on affordable housing provision. BPF policy director Ian Fletcher said: “The idea of bringing in a new infrastructure levy is to remove the complexities experienced under the current system of contributions, but the new levy has fundamental structural challenges and [...]

Midland’s housebuilder A C Lloyd has withdrawn its application to build 200 homes on agricultural land in Warwickshire despite having secured outline planning permission. The move follows levelling up and housing secretary Michael Gove’s decision to call in the developer’s reserved matters application on design grounds. The housebuilding industry views Mr Gove’s increasingly interventionist approach over how a scheme looks as a worrying trend. National Federation of Builders, NFB, housing and policy head Rico Wojtulewicz said: “If it’s so important [...]

Small housebuilders must be given a slice of the action if Labour follows its promise to build on green belt to meet housing needs, urges the Federation of Master Builders, FMB. The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has announced that if his party wins the next election, it will bring back local authority housing targets and back ‘builders not blockers’. “We've got to drive housebuilding at pace. We need to put local areas in charge of that so change the [...]

House prices were up by half a per cent in April after seven months of consecutive falls, according to the latest figures from Nationwide building society. The average UK house cost £260,411 compared with £257,122 in March, although year-on-year growth for April remained negative at minus 2.7 per cent. Nationwide’s chief economist Robert Gardner said: “In recent months industry data on mortgage applications point to signs of a pickup. “If inflation falls sharply in the second half of the year, [...]

Nearly a quarter of a million extra people are needed in construction by 2027 but outdated perceptions mean it is often overlooked as a career, according to a new report. The Chartered Institute of Building, CIOB’s The Real Face of Construction survey showed 57 per cent of respondents perceived average annual earnings to be lower than the true figure of £36,000. CIOB chief executive Caroline Gumble said: “Our survey shows there are big misconceptions around earning potential, job prospects and [...]

Surveyors predict a positive net balance of housing sales of plus one per cent over the next 12 months, according to March’s residential market survey. This is the first time this measure has been out of negative territory since March 2022, but it is set against a current backdrop of weak demand. Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors chief economist Simon Rubinsohn said: “Significantly, there is a sense that the medium-term outlook is looking a little more settled, helped by the [...]

Housebuilders have branded Bath and North East Somerset council’s decision to ask for all new homes to be net zero as ‘unaffordable’ and ‘undeliverable’ at scale. They argue the council’s decision cuts across work between industry and the government for all homes to be ‘zero carbon ready’ under future homes standards to go live by 2025. A home is ‘zero carbon ready’ when it can rely on heat pumps and solar panels rather than gas boilers and has an efficient [...]

Scottish housebuilders claim new design standards based on the German Passivhaus system will hamper meeting the country’s housing needs. Homes for Scotland has said the country has a 100,000 shortfall of new homes accumulated since 2007 and that the government should have prioritised retrofitting existing ones. Public affairs director Jennifer Kennedy said: “New homes are only a small proportion of the overall housing stock and are already highly-energy efficient with further improvements to come through building standards.” She added: “If [...]

The construction supply industry has won a major victory with the 30-month extension of the CE mark for building products. The government had planned to scrap the European system by the end of the year in favour of its own regime, the UKCA mark, which goes live in January 2023. However, the lack of UK testing labs would have meant a massive delay in products gaining approval. Earlier this week the department of levelling up and housing agreed with business [...]