Steve Reed says sector needs ‘support’ in wake of Middle East war
Housing secretary Steve Reed has said his department is set to talk to the Treasury about what sort of stimulus it can give to the depressed housing market in the wake of nosediving consumer confidence following the conflict in the Middle East.
Housebuilders have long called for support for first-time buyers, similar to the Help to Buy scheme which ended roughly three years ago.
Last month, Wates chief executive Eoghan O’Lionaird called for the government to intervene and introduce a stimulus to kickstart the housing sector.
“They cannot ignore this,” he said, adding such a move would “give confidence to buyers, developers and builders. The longer the war persists, the greater the uncertainty and the challenges for the economy persist.”
Speaking alongside Homes Englas boss Pat Ritchie at an event at property show UKREiiF in Leeds yesterday, Reed said that “of course there are conversations we need to have” about further support “given what’s just happened in the Middle East”.
He added: “The final quarter of last year saw a 24% increase in housing starts. That’s exactly the kind of trajectory we needed to go on but events overseas are affecting that, so we know we need to sit down and have conversations, myself with Pat [Ritchie], with the Treasury and with the sector.
“Urgent support is required to keep us going through what we hope will be a limited period of disruption, and then we get back to the trajectory we need to be on to build the homes that we know can help speed up economic growth, but also tackle the housing crisis we have in this country.”
And he admitted: “We know the market needs further support. Now that we’ve tackled a lot of the barriers that were in the way through unnecessary burdensome planning regulations, that is what people are looking at.”
Meanwhile, Reed said the final version of the latest National Planning Policy Framework would be published “very, very shortly”, without giving a specific date.
He said it was “very frustrating how long these consultations take” and admitted that his department “need to be looking at how we can speed that up”.
Reed said some suggestions from the consultation were “going to make it more effective than it was to start with”, adding that his department “understand the urgency to get that going”.
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