The new Labour government’s plan to build 1.5million homes over the next five years sounds great, especially when you add up all the windows, doors, conservatories – and associated spacer bar, glass and hardware – that this will consume.
Labour has also said it will free up more land to build these new homes, as well as speed up planning processes.
But is the target realistic? One major obstacle is that the supply of the majority of new homes in the UK is in the hands of property developers, who up until now have done a pretty good job of controlling that supply in order to maximise their returns.
And even if the government is able to influence or incentivise commercial house builders, they will still need people to build them – a key resource that is in short supply.
According to the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), an extra 152,000 workers will be required to meet Labour’s ambitious housing targets.
This point is highlighted in this week’s newsletter by Rehau’s CEO, Martin Hitchin, who says that the labour crisis is ‘biting hard in London, with housing associations facing shortages of up to 2,600 skilled people to construct, maintain and retrofit social housing stock’ and adds that the ‘London problem is also a UK problem, as workers are spread too thinly to build specialist knowledge in crucial areas such as window specification’.
Similarly, Eurocell is also urging government for help to increase the number of skilled workers in the industry as part of a broader plea for it to outline its vision and strategy for the decarbonisation of social housing.
You can read more details of that story here.
Ultimately, the industry would relish the opportunity to manufacture and supply all the products and expertise required to complete Labour’s new homes targets – and seems well equipped to do so – but at the moment, it would appear that the government needs to focus on solving some important issues before these can be achieved.
Who’s going to build all the new houses?
The new Labour government’s plan to build 1.5million homes over the next five years sounds great, especially when you add up all the windows, doors, conservatories – and associated spacer bar, glass and hardware – that this will consume.
Labour has also said it will free up more land to build these new homes, as well as speed up planning processes.
But is the target realistic? One major obstacle is that the supply of the majority of new homes in the UK is in the hands of property developers, who up until now have done a pretty good job of controlling that supply in order to maximise their returns.
And even if the government is able to influence or incentivise commercial house builders, they will still need people to build them – a key resource that is in short supply.
According to the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), an extra 152,000 workers will be required to meet Labour’s ambitious housing targets.
This point is highlighted in this week’s newsletter by Rehau’s CEO, Martin Hitchin, who says that the labour crisis is ‘biting hard in London, with housing associations facing shortages of up to 2,600 skilled people to construct, maintain and retrofit social housing stock’ and adds that the ‘London problem is also a UK problem, as workers are spread too thinly to build specialist knowledge in crucial areas such as window specification’.
Similarly, Eurocell is also urging government for help to increase the number of skilled workers in the industry as part of a broader plea for it to outline its vision and strategy for the decarbonisation of social housing.
You can read more details of that story here.
Ultimately, the industry would relish the opportunity to manufacture and supply all the products and expertise required to complete Labour’s new homes targets – and seems well equipped to do so – but at the moment, it would appear that the government needs to focus on solving some important issues before these can be achieved.
Glass Times
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