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Home Builders Federation’s housing slump claim is ‘fear mongering’, we say

27th February 2023

The Home Builders Federation has claimed that changes to planning policy could lead to a huge slump in the number of homes built annually.

Commenting on these claims, Tom Fyans, interim CEO of CPRE said:

‘We strongly disagree with this blatant fear mongering. Local authorities will still be expected to provide more land for housebuilding. But it’s welcome that in future they’ll be put under less pressure to allow large scale building on our precious countryside.

‘The Letwin Review was clear that we don’t build enough homes, mainly because large house builders are not motivated to tackle the housing crisis. Their main motivation, unsurprisingly, is to maximise their profits. This can be seen from their constant lobbying for more greenfield and Green Belt sites, despite enough brownfield land being available for 1.2 million homes, as well as the sluggish way big developers build new homes once they’ve got planning permission. They deliberately drip feed properties onto the market to exploit the workings of supply and demand.

‘Letwin recommended local councils be given more power to steer the development of big housing sites – whether greenfield or brownfield – so that we get better designed, more energy efficient new housing.

‘This is a sensible solution to a critical national problem. We need to put people before profits, which means building vastly more social homes and bringing forward developments that include a mix of tenures to better meet the needs of local people.’

Machinery on brownfield land
Lee Hudson / Alamy

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