FMB: SMEs should play key role in Tory house building plans

The Federation of Master Builders has called on the Conservative Party to make SMEs central to their revised ambitious house building programme.

The response comes as the government released its manifesto and expanded upon its current target of building one million new homes by 2020 to 1.5 million homes by 2022.

The government will also utilise its land to build 160,000 homes.

There will be a greater emphasis on building high quality homes with a higher density.

Sarah McMonagle, Director of External Affairs at the FMB, welcomed the Conservative Party’s acknowledgement of the scale of the housing crisis but warned these targets could only be achieved by enabling a greater mix of companies within the house building sector.

She said: “The decline in the number and output of smaller local house builders over the past few decades has led to the industry’s capacity haemorrhaging. To deliver the PM’s vision we will need to reverse this. The Manifesto’s explicit pledge to diversify the delivery of new homes is therefore extremely welcome. Key to doing this will be being able to build on some of the sensible reforms outlined in the recent Housing White Paper, which we hope to see implemented.”

“The Conservative Party’s manifesto sets out an ambition not only to build more, but to build better. There is a welcome emphasis on balancing the pressure for increasing the delivery of new properties with the need to deliver those homes to a high standard. As is widely recognised, smaller scale house builders have a strong focus on quality. By supporting greater diversity in terms of the companies building our new homes, a Conservative Government would be killing two birds with one stone. This is a vision that SMEs can build on.“

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