HBF Parliamentary Newsletter - Autumn 2024

The Home Builders Federation (HBF) is the representative body of the home building industry in England and Wales. Our members are responsible for providing around 80% of all new private homes built in England and Wales, and are mostly small or medium-sized enterprises.

HBF would like to invite MPs to a breakfast roundtable with residential developers to discuss how we can work together to build more energy-efficient, high-quality new homes of all tenures and deliver more for local communities.

Three separate roundtables will be held for Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats MPs:

• Date: 22nd October (Liberal Democrats), 20th November (Labour), 3rd December (Conservative)
• Time: 9.30 – 11am
• Venue: Location in Westminster, RSVP for more details
• RSVP: Emma Ramell, External Affairs Director

During the roundtables, we hope to discuss some of the issues that are undermining industry’s efforts to invest in new communities, identify potential solutions to these challenges, and establish a collaborative approach to building more and better new homes.

The roundtables will be chaired by HBF’s Chief Executive, Neil Jefferson, and attended by home builders of varying size and location.

To confirm your attendance, or for further information, please do not hesitate to contact Emma Ramell.

HBF is attending party conferences this year, and we would be delighted if you could join us at the following events:

Labour Party Conference

• 22 September, 7pm, Imagine Room, Hilton Hotel, Liverpool – External Affairs Director, Emma Ramell will be speaking at the Labour YIMBY: Rally for the Builders about the importance of home building to tackling the housing crisis.
• 23 September, 4pm, meeting room 11A, ACC, Liverpool - HBF, Homes for Britain and Progress are jointly sponsoring a reception at Labour Party Conference on 'Funding Homes for Social Rent: A Role for Institutional Capital'. A range of speakers, including our Chief Executive Neil Jefferson, will address attendees. The event will also mark the launch of a new report, to which HBF has contributed, on the issues with S106.
• 24 September, 12-1pm, Room TBC, Liverpool – An HBF representative will be joining the panel of a Natwest/New Statesman fringe to talk about overcoming the bottlenecks preventing the delivery of more homes.

Conservative Party Conference

• Monday 30 September, 10.30am-12pm, Churchill Theatre, ICC Birmingham - HBF is partnering with ‘Next Gen Tories’ for a fringe event about housing delivery and home ownership.

HBF will also be attending the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton. Please do get in touch if you would like to meet our team there.

HBF and the housebuilding sector have expressed support for the Government’s initial steps to tackle the constraints on housing delivery in an industry statement.

The statement, which has been signed by HBF and around 40 home builders, came in response to the planning reforms announced by the Government on 30 July, including the reintroduction of mandatory local housing targets and releasing of ‘grey belt’ land.

In the statement, the home building industry says it “stands ready to make changes to rapidly increase the pace at which homes are built, delivering the high-quality and affordable homes the country needs, providing skilled jobs and contributing to turbo-charging economic growth.”

The statement also makes clear that a range of different actors, including mortgage lenders, housing associations and councils will need to come to together and support the Government’s very ambitious housing targets.

The house builder statement can be read in full on HBF’s website.

The average first-time buyer would have to save half of their earnings for almost a decade to afford a deposit, new analysis by HBF has revealed.

The report, Broken Ladder, examines house prices, earnings and mortgage costs in different regions. It finds that, after covering rent and bills, the average first-time buyer in England would need to save 50% of their remaining monthly income over nine years to afford a deposit to buy a home. This rises to over a decade in the East of England, and to more than 13 years in London and the South East.

Even if a first-time buyer were to save 100% of their earnings, the analysis shows it would take four years to build up the funds required for the average house deposit.

During a period of higher mortgage rates and diminished consumer confidence, more and more people are now being locked out of homeownership. However, for the first time in decades there is no active government support for aspiring homeowners. HBF is calling for a new targeted homeownership scheme to boost first-time buyer deposits and give them access to new build mortgages at competitive rates.

Average age of first-time buyers in England

The home building industry is adapting at pace to support the country’s net zero targets and deliver increasingly energy- and thermal-efficient homes.

HBF’s latest calculations based on EPC registrations data show that:

• New build homes emit 61% less carbon a year than existing properties.
• The average new build home is powered by 57% less energy, cutting energy bills by up to £183 a month. This is an annual saving of over £2,200.
• New build homes are increasingly more energy efficient. Less than 5% of existing older properties achieve an A or B Energy Performance Certificate rating (EPC), compared to 85% for new builds.

The calculations are based on the Ofgem price cap from January 2024, using data from EPC registrations of new and existing properties in the year to 30 June 2024.

Carbon emissions of new build vs existing properties, year to June 2024 (tonnes/PA)

A Freedom of Information (FOI) exercise undertaken by HBF Has found that more than £50 million of taxpayer money was spent on external legal advice on planning appeals over the past three years.

The money comprises spending by individual councils and by the Planning Inspectorate, an executive agency of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) responsible for dealing with appeals.

The new data finds that each local council spent an average of £45,000 per year on legal advice relating to planning appeals between 2020/21 and 2022/23, amounting to a national total of £15 million a year.

Planning departments have long faced resource and funding shortages, and so it is concerning that increasingly large amounts of money could be being wasted on processes for unnecessary planning appeals due to a growing anti-development sentiment in large swathes of the country.

Read the results of our FOI exercise in full on the HBF website.

More than 70 of the home building industry’s HR talent leaders and diversity and inclusion advocates came together for the Home Builders Federation (HBF) inaugural Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Conference, which took place on Wednesday 19 June.

Chaired by Sophie Turner, Founder of #YesSheCan, the conference discussed the importance of creating inclusive work cultures and shared learnings from other sectors. Neil Jefferson, Chief Executive at HBF, opened the conference by emphasising the importance of sharing knowledge across the industry to drive positive progress.

Meanwhile, HBF has recently launched the fifth cohort of its Women into Home Building programme to attract more women into site management careers. The programme is being delivered in partnership with 10 home builders to offer more than 30 training, support and work placements.

Currently, women account for just 16% of the construction workforce and 4% of existing site managers in the home building industry. With the industry facing a major skills shortage, the programme aims to address the constraints of the current talent pipeline and the gender imbalance in the workforce.