The Federation of Master Builders [FMB] has this week released its annual House Builder’s Survey, highlighting some of the factors that prevent small, local house builders from delivering homes.
The House Builder’s Survey has been published each year for more than a decade and the 2022 edition uncovered that some of the central constraints to providing more housing supply for smaller building firms includes a lack of land availability, issues with the planning system and skills shortages.
The most cited constraint (62 per cent of respondents) was that a lack of ‘available and viable land’ is adversely impacting the ability of SMEs to build more homes. 82 per cent of respondents fed back that the number of small site opportunities was on the decline, an increase on the 71 per cent who said the same in 2021.
Elsewhere in the survey, 60 per cent of businesses quoted the planning system as being a key constraint, with respondents saying that “inadequate resourcing of planning departments” was the most significant cause of delay in the planning process, followed by inadequate communication from planning officers.
47 per cent of responding businesses placed shortage of skills as their main constraint, while 38 per cent quoted restricted mortgage ability as the biggest barrier.
On the latter issue, there was little optimism of the situation easing as 48 per cent of those surveyed said that they expected the problem to intensify in the next three years.
On skills, 25 per cent of businesses say that they want to increase their on-site workforce in the next year, but only 40 per cent of firms have suggested that they have been employing apprentices this year (a decrease of six per cent on the 2021 figures).
Instead, more firms have taken it upon themselves to upskill workers, with 46 per cent offering their own training compared to 36 per cent last year.
The full FMB House Builder’s Survey can be found here.
Individuals wanting to find out more about this survey can contact the FMB policy team at publicaffairs@fmb.org.uk.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
