The Government’s target of building 1 million new homes over this parliament is unlikely to be met. Less than 460,000 homes were built between 2011 and 2014, according to figures from the National Housing Federation, despite forecasts that 974,000 new homes were needed.
This contributed to the significant shortfall or residential properties across the country, prompting the Government to increase its housebuilding target to 1 million by 2020, including more Starter Homes and shared ownership properties.
However, despite efforts by the Government to encourage more housebuilding, the latest PMI data for the manufacturing industry shows that the residential housing sector in Q1 2016 actually recorded the weakest pace of growth since January 2013.
Tim Moore, Senior Economist at Markit, said, “Residential building has seen the greatest loss of momentum through the first quarter of 2016, which is a surprising reversal of fortunes given strong market fundamentals and its clear outperformance over the past three years.”
The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and Home Builders Federation (HBF) recently announced a major new partnership to help tackle the housing skill needs in the construction industry by creating long-term skills solutions to meet the Government’s target of 1 million new homes by 2020.
Over 45,000 new homebuilding workers will be trained by 2019 to help tackle the nation’s housing shortage through the Home Building Skills Partnership – a £2.7 million training initiative designed to help boost the supply of new build homes.
The new partnership between CITB and HBF will support over 3,500 construction businesses and, by 2019, train 45,000 new entrants and 1,000 experienced workers with new homebuilding training qualifications.
Stewart Baseley, Executive Chairman at HBF, commented, “The industry has delivered huge increases in supply over the past couple of years. To enable us to continue increasing output, such that we can deliver the high quality new homes the country needs, it is absolutely crucial we build up industry capacity.
"To allow us to do it is essential we have a clear focus on delivering the training the industry needs. The partnership will enable us to develop targeted training that meets the specific needs of our industry in a structured way so we can grow steadily and sustainably.”
