Whitepaper – Solving the UK’s housing shortage

With a shortfall of 4.75 million houses in the UK, radical reforms are needed to kickstart housebuilding. A comprehensive whitepaper, published by Brickflow and Ian Humphreys, titled  ‘Solving the UK’s Housing Shortage’ the first report of its kind, tackles the barriers to housebuilding, scrutinises hundreds of pages of government policy and rhetoric and provides a robust 10-step framework for moving forward and getting Britain building.

Alongside 13 industry thought leaders across the UK, our head of business development for Commercial Lending Gareth Davies, contributes to the report, highlighting several key challenges in the housing and development industry including:

• The availability and high cost of development land and the need for land prices to align with developers’ budgets
• Government funding, while available, is often slow and insufficient at addressing the shortage
• Material shortages and rising costs which impact project viability
• The importance of investing in apprenticeships and training programs to address the shortage of skilled labour
• An outdated and time-consuming planning process causing delays
• Political agendas causing a lack of forward thinking in properly addressing the housing supply-demand imbalance  

A copy of the report has been sent to Michael Gove, Rachel Maclean MP, Sir Keir Starmer and politicians across all parties, and they are invited to embrace the recommendations and work with partners from across the private sector, to build the homes our nation so desperately needs.