While the 2023 Autumn Statement saw the Chancellor, the Rt Hon
Jeremy Hunt, stray into enabling growth through policy strategy and support,
the SpringBudget 2024 was more traditional, with the ambition of growth coming
through taxation, rather than business enablement.
Richard Beresford, Chief Executive of the National Federation of
Builders (NFB), said the Budget offers opportunities to offset costs, invest in
innovations and see paths to growth but apart from a strong hand played on
energy, it doesn’t enable growth in practice.
“With the lack of firm planning and procurement reforms, and
retrofit entirely left out, there is disquiet that the major growth
opportunities will never be realised by this government,” he added.
Within the full budget release, the Chancellor identified that
2024 was the ‘year of the SME’ and while reduced taxation, investment allowance
and investment opportunity will be welcomed, the dire state of planning policy,
lack of supply ambition and numerous new taxes will, and is already seeing, SME
housebuilders and regional contractors exit the sector or go out of business.
Rico Wojtulewicz, Head of Housing and Market Insight at the NFB,
said: “It’s hard to not welcome long overdue grid strategies and some
announcements such as digitising and integrating AI into planning, bringing
forward nutrient neutrality investment, and enabling more social housing are
hugely welcomed. However, it’s all a little too late. Planning digitisation has
been a key plank of our lobbying for almost a decade.
“Nutrient neutrality investment is the Government’s response to
dropping solutions that they proposed. In addition, the increase in social and
affordable housing funding feels like a stats fudge because the Chancellor
realises Michael Gove’s policies are decimating the supply of market
housing.”
The Budget
was a missed opportunity to build new homes and improve the ones we have, to
make them more energy efficient, which would have stimulated economic growth
across the county, says the Federation of Master Builders (FMB).
Brian Berry Chief Executive of the FMB, said: “The Budget could have been an
opportunity to kickstart the housing market with house building rates stagnant,
but the Chancellor has done nothing. It was also disappointing there were no
new measures to help homeowners improve the energy efficiency of their homes.
This was an opportunity to reform the planning system, boost local authority
planning teams’ capacities, and review the financial burdens the planning
system places on smaller house builders, but again these much-needed reforms
have been overlooked.
“The
Chancellor could have helped to close the construction skills gap ensuring the
UK has the workers with the green skills needed to retrofit the UK’s homes, and
provided support to help small builders deal with the administrative burden of
training apprentices. All these areas could have grown the economy, instead
builders got left behind – this Budget was a missed opportunity.
“The
Chancellor’s announcement to increase the VAT threshold for small businesses
from £85,000 to £90,000 is welcome but the rate has been frozen for seven years
so in real terms it makes little difference.”
The Housing Forum welcomed the £240m announced to
unlock housing in Barking and Canary Wharf, and also the second round of
funding to address the nutrient neutrality issue blocking new homes. It was
disappointing not to see any other significant new funding announced for
housing in the Budget.
“The housing sector has been struggling with market
downturn and a raft of new regulations, making it more expensive and difficult
to build new homes,” it said. “The government is on course to miss its own
target of 300,000 new homes a year, and there was nothing today to suggest any
plan to remedy this situation. The Housing Forum's proposals for a £4bn fund
for affordable housing would enable the 60,000 households currently in
temporary accommodations to have a home of their own, reducing costs for local
authorities’ hard-stretched budgets and helping the housing and construction
sector to retain capacity to accelerate in the future.
“We’re also very concerned about the funding cuts proposed to unprotected
departments like the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, over
the coming years. Even more worrying is the lack of support for local
authorities, many of which are on the verge of issuing Section 114 notices.
Well-funded local authorities are needed to develop local plans and build much
needed social housing, if councils are left in the lurch then housebuilding
will decline yet further.”
