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26 Oct
Earlier this month, the UK Government announced plans for a £3bn Home Building Fund. The new funding will provide loans to homebuilders and essential infrastructure, to help them build 25,000 new homes by 2020 and 225,000 in the long term.
The recent news came from British Chancellor of the Exchequer Phillip Hammond and Communities Secretary Sajid Javid at the Conservative Party Conference. They said that the funding would “ensure that everyone has a secure place to live.”
There are several areas that will be covered when it comes to how the money is spent. The first will be loans for small to medium construction companies, that may otherwise struggle to get the funding to cover the costs that are involved with building a house.
An additional £2bn will be used to encourage new developers to enter the industry, as well as trying to get builders to adopt different construction models that will boost the number of homes being built.
Reaction
The new fund has already received a lot of support from the construction sector, which includes builders, architects and industry experts. They think that it will help to solve the housing crisis, which is currently a very serious problem in the UK.
Brian Berry, who is the chief executive of the Federation of Master Builders, commented on the Home Building Fund, saying; “We welcome the Government’s renewed focus on housebuilding and its recognition that without a resurgent SME sector, there’s little prospect of the country tackling its chronic under-supply of new homes.”
“The launch of a £3bn Home Builders Fund, a significant part of which will be specifically targeted at supporting small scale developers, will tackle one of the key barriers to SME housebuilders – a lack of access to finance.”
However, there will obviously be pressure on the Government to get it right as they can’t simply hand out money to every single construction company that asks. They will need to carefully address the balance between demand and supply, as well as the long-term future of the Home Building Fund if they want it to be a success.