Leading housebuilder Horgan Homes says yesterday’s Budget was a missed opportunity to help regional construction firms survive the continuing crisis in the industry.
Horgan Homes director Sophie Horgan said moves announced by the Chancellor would add to the pressures already facing local builders by increasing the cost of employing people and adding to the red tape around recruitment.
Sophie, whose company is behind a number of award-winning developments across the Midlands, said:
“The announcement of an increase in National Insurance for employers means it becomes even more expensive to employ people and is sure to have a chilling effect on recruitment.
“At a time when regional and local housebuilders are facing the biggest crisis in their history, adding to their costs is hardly a recipe for growth.
“We recognise efforts to invest in the building of affordable homes but this does little to help the sector as a whole.
“There are just 2,500 SME housebuilders left in this country – a fifth of the number in the 1980s and construction firms are going out of business at a rate of 4,600 a year.
“If you had asked me in advance what the government could do to really help our sector of the construction industry, I would have asked for the introduction of new targets for local housebuilding to help bring more character and diversity to our national housing stock.
“I welcome some of the investment in fixed capital like roads, rail, and hospitals, but that will all be somewhat hollow if we have no local builders left to deliver the work the government says it is planning.
“We also have to seriously address the issue of training – attracting many more women and people from wider backgrounds into construction – if the government is serious about delivering an extra 300,000 new homes a year.”
Sophie is one of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ female leaders in construction, spearheading the I Am A Housebuilder campaign launched by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for SME housebuilders. The campaign sees women wanting to go into construction matched with female mentors.
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