An Open Letter to the Chancellor

Dear Rachel…

When you stand up in the House of Commons on Wednesday, one of the most important things you can do for the housing sector is to announce a new support scheme for prospective first time buyers.

There are so many things that need fixing to allow housebuilders and their supply chain, businesses like ours, to get on and build, and threats alone won’t do it. (see Kier Starmer’s threats to the sector in May “This is my message to housebuilders: get on with it. If you promise homes, you have to build them. As part of our Plan for Change, we’re introducing penalties if you don’t build them fast enough.”)

No credible housebuilder can afford to risk catastrophic and existential cashflow issues by building houses that can’t be sold. So even if you fix the staff shortages, funding for social homes, planning issue, biodiversity net gains, and stop adding expensive green energy requirements to the cost of every build (and there’s much more) – you’re still not going to meet your targets if the hard working people of this country can’t get on the housing ladder in the first place. The demand simply isn’t there without the support, like the discontinued Help to Buy scheme.

We aren’t alone in this request. Speak to any housebuilder. Listen to the Home Builders Federation’s Policy and Public Affairs Manager, Laura Markus, reflecting on the urgent need for the Government to use the upcoming Spending Review to tackle the deepening housing affordability crisis by introducing targeted support for first-time buyers and restoring fairness to the market (* https://www.hbf.co.uk/news/failing-to-act-in-the-spending-review-will-lock-a-generation-out-of-home-ownership/)

So give housebuilders, their supply chain, and all the people struggling to save up for a deposit on their first home a break, Rachel.

Yours sincerely

James Scott
MD